


Perfume and Knives

by mowscannon



Series: When I Think Of My Future [1]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Bear - Freeform, Bitter Pill, But I'm gonna make you wait, Completely canon except for the fact that I'm writing the next part of their lives, F/F, Inspired by Killing Eve (TV 2018), Intrigue, Jamie Hayward - Freeform, Knives, Konstantin - Freeform, Lesbian Sex, Let's dive in, Prague, Ring Fights, Slow Burn, Spying, Villaneve romance, but just the littlest because seriously neither of them are cut out for that let's be real, definitely some smut, maybe even the slightest bit of domestic fluff, muay thai, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:42:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27672181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mowscannon/pseuds/mowscannon
Summary: Set immediately post Season 3x08After Villanelle and Eve make their decision on the bridge, they have immediate problems to cope with. How can they move on with their lives after everything that has happened?Jamie approaches them with a job, and they go undercover to Prague to investigate a series of deaths tied to an underground bareknuckle boxing ring.Eve is intrigued and obsessed. Villanelle is disturbed. A romance blossoms.---Villanelle stood in the corner over a stand bearing a silver dish, buttering toast. She was wearing one of the hotel’s white bathrobes and her blonde hair hung limp and wet, clinging to her neck. Eve stared silently, taking her in. The structure of her face was exquisite. Each time, it seemed like a shock. In this completely unguarded moment, Villanelle was consumed with focus on the piece of bread that she was scraping a knife across. What looked to Eve like emotions passed across her face as she examined the toast, lifted it to her mouth and took a huge bite. Her mouth full, chewing with satisfaction, Villanelle turned to glance at the bed and saw that Eve was awake. She stopped and smiled; her cheeks puffed out with bread.“Hi, Eve.”
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Series: When I Think Of My Future [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2176485
Comments: 104
Kudos: 253





	1. Perfume

_28, 29, 30, 31…_

Eve counted each step in her head as they walked away from each other. She knew that if she let herself think of anything else at all, she would not be able to lift another foot. She narrowed her focus down to a pinpoint, tried to squeeze her whole self into each ascending number, and ground through another step. She shut out the sounds of passing traffic, the sting of the cold night air on her cheeks, the damp rising off the dark water beneath Tower Bridge. The number 32 felt like it would burst through her sternum, grew like a thick bubble and made her chest ache. She wanted to choke on 33. Eve realized that she hadn’t taken a single breath. She stopped in her tracks and inhaled.

  
She could still smell Villanelle.

  
The smell was trapped in Eve’s brown curls and the fur lining the hood of her parka from where they had leaned against each other’s backs, Villanelle’s new scent: sandalwood, jasmine and bergamot. Cloves, orange. Smoke. What was it? Maybe it was the night air itself. Maybe it would cling to Eve permanently and she would always go on smelling it at unwelcome moments for the rest of her life.

  
My miserable, empty life – Eve thought. That was just it. The reason it was so hard to take the next step. Eve had always been a visionary. She could take vast amounts of information and synthesize it down to a simple meaning. The knowledge, the sense of correctness would seem to rise out of the milieu. It was like having an extra sense that others did not have. But a fog had come down over her mind in the past year, one she had tried to drown with wine and beer and cigarettes and celebrity talk shows and instant noodles.  
Suddenly, it seemed, she could not see her future clearly. It was like trying to push through a dark veil. No matter how much she had thought about it, nothing came to her. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Sometimes she had lain in the tired and suffocating darkness of her cluttered apartment in the middle of the night, not realizing that she was awake for long periods of time, thinking of this nothingness and trying to will it away. When she had dreamed, she dreamed of dark water pouring through the windows, rotting the walls of the apartment away, her books and newspapers swirling on the floor as she splashed around frantically, crying out. Sometimes while attempting to move her things from the path of the dream flood, she would find Niko’s corpse, blue and stiff, sodden. She would wake to her own muffled cries in the pillow.

  
In the moment Eve stopped walking, as she took a breath and smelled Villanelle, as the scent bloomed in her nostrils and reached her throat, she knew that she could not go back to that apartment.

  
She turned.

  
Villanelle, as if afraid to look, turned over her left shoulder, her bright mustard-colored coat shining under the orange street lamps like a lighthouse. She always looked somehow more tangible than her surroundings. Her wide green eyes and smooth cheeks almost glowed as they stared at each other, unblinking. Finally, Eve said what was on her mind.

  
“I’d rather jump off this bridge,” she heard herself confess. A sense of certainty had risen up out of the darkness like a bubble floating to the surface of a dark pond. Villanelle did not respond for a moment.

  
Then -- “What?” Villanelle called.

  
“I’d rather jump off this bridge!” Eve yelled back, a giddiness descending on her, a hysterical relief beginning to buzz in her cold fingertips. “I’d rather jump off this fucking bridge!”

  
“Eve, I—” Villanelle’s mouth cracked in a confused half-smile and she leaned forward slightly, her hands deep in her pockets, “—I can’t hear you.”

  
“I would jump OFF THIS FUCKING BRIDGE!” Eve screamed. A young man walking by stopped hesitantly, looking disturbed.

  
“Er, mum, don’t jump. Please don’t jump.” He took gloved hands out of his jacket pockets and cautiously turned the palms toward her as if she were a startled and dangerous animal. “I can get help.”

  
“What? No, I—” Eve shook her head at him, and a loud laugh suddenly escaped her throat. Maybe she was a startled and dangerous animal. She laughed again, almost doubled over, put her hands on her knees and smelled it again: incense. Sawdust.

  
Villanelle had swiftly closed the gap between them and, placing a hand protectively on Eve’s curved back, was talking to the young man in a smooth and girly English accent.  
“Sorry if she’s botherin’ you, don’t worry, she’s, ehm, off her meds—” Villanelle smiled sweetly and rolled her eyes at the man until he shrugged noncommittally and walked away, Eve still laughing. Eve took another shaky breath and straightened up, turning to look at Villanelle.

  
“You absolute dick,” she said, grinning. “You could hear me the whole time.”

  
Villanelle smiled back, not the fake smile she had given the concerned citizen but a goofy grin of her own. “Sometimes it’s good for you to scream,” she replied, her Russian accent returning, rolling across her tongue. She turned and leaned suddenly against the wooden banister of the bridge railing, raised to the tip of her toes and yelled out into the dark river. “I AM GOING TO JUMP OFF THIS BRIDGE. I am going to jump off this bridge! AHHHHH!”

  
A passing truck honked loudly. People turned and stared. Eve slapped at Villanelle’s arm, the slap muffled by the thick wool sleeve of Villanelle’s long coat.

  
“You know what’s good for me? Seriously? You know what I want?”

  
Villanelle lowered back on her heels and looked at Eve. “Is this a rhetorical question?”

  
“I am dying for a glass of wine.”

  
Villanelle’s eyes were bright and focused. Her bottom lip worked, pretending to make a decision. “Can it be champagne?”

Stepping from the cold street into the wine bar, Eve felt a rush of warm air against her face, accompanied by a wall of conversation, laughter and flickering yellow candlelight. They were under the Holborn Viaduct, and the ceilings of the bar were vaulted and curving brick, the mortar yellowing and old. Lining the walls along the edges of the bar, empty wine bottles were being used as candlestick holders with red tapers burning steadily and casting their wavering light across the hardwood floor and the ankles of the patrons, casting dancing shadows that made Eve feel dizzy, then grounded, real, then unreal.

  
The staff seemed to recognize Villanelle because they guided them immediately with only a nod and a word to a table in the corner with mismatched wooden chairs. A quiet, bearded man approached and poured them glasses of water, laid a wine list on the table, then retreated respectfully. Eve settled into her chair and sighed, almost slumping as she removed her coat. It had been a long night already, and winter nights in London were very long. She wanted to drown herself in wine.

  
“God, you know,” she began, looking at Villanelle. Villanelle gave her a tired smile, waiting expectantly. It hit Eve in the gut, how tired Villanelle seemed. Eve had spent the past years professionally analyzing Villanelle’s moods and expressions. She could tell the difference, sometimes, between her fake smiles and real smiles, the charm she put on to be persuasive and the raw charm she carried when she was being, more or less, herself. Often Eve held herself at a distance from these observations because she had already been caught off guard several times by how heavily the lines between Villanelle’s false self and real self melded together, how mercurial her moods could be, and how Villanelle seemed to sincerely not always know who exactly she was being at any given moment.

  
Today had been different. Earlier, at the ballroom, all façade had seemed wiped cleanly away. There were tiny lines next to Villanelle’s hazel eyes. The hint of circles. Her expression was completely unguarded and weary. Eve’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, looking into those eyes, thinking about how little she knew of Villanelle’s past few months. She knew that there was a vast gulf between the Villanelle who lived in Paris with a fridge full of champagne and the Villanelle that sat across from her now, but she did not know what had been taken away or given to Villanelle that had caused such a shift.

  
“I know…what?” Villanelle asked, unusually calm and attentive. Eve stared at her features, softened by the candles. She felt guilt stirring in her stomach at all the times Villanelle had tried to talk to her, spend time with her, touch her – each time, Eve had thrown up an icy wall, except when she wanted something. For business. Villanelle’s cheeks looked like alabaster, curved like the brick walls of the wine bar, pink and yellow, accentuating her lips and enormous eyes.

  
Eve sighed, collapsing a bit, and pulled her hands through her hair, trying to tame her curls. She ran her fingertips behind her ears – habit. She straightened and looked at Villanelle directly. A gate swung open in her chest. “You know you have the most beautiful eyes?”

  
Villanelle remained very still.

  
At that moment the server returned, and Villanelle, who always had a finger on the pulse of her surroundings, turned her face to him before Eve noticed that he was approaching.  
“What do you have of Bonnet-Ponson?”

  
“Perpétuelle, ma’am, Extra Brut. Les Vignes Dieu from 2018, and Chamery Rouge. Same vintage.”

  
“I would like the Perpétuelle,” Villanelle replied, and cocking her head at Eve she asked, “You prefer red?” Eve nodded. “Then Chamery Rouge as well.”

  
“Charcuterie?” the server asked.

  
“Of course.”

  
Eve knew that she was hungry but would not have thought to order food. The jumbled events of the night had crowded those thoughts out of her head. The wine came almost immediately, and Eve sipped it gratefully. The red was dry, dark and full. It was much more expensive and much drier than she was accustomed to. The taste of oak slid down the back of her tongue and coated her throat, leaving her thirsty. _Oak,_ she thought. That was another part of Villanelle’s smell. Like bourbon, pinot noir.

  
“They’re so many different colors,” Eve blurted. Villanelle raised an eyebrow and drank from her glass. “Last month I was walking by the river and there was an enormous puddle. A storm drain clogged. The water was…deep. Still. There were leaves floating in it. Some dark. Some bright. It seemed green, and brown, and flecked with light. I thought I could see the bottom, but…” Eve could feel the wine sliding into her empty stomach, burning, buzzing. “They are like a mossy pool,” she finished, almost whispering. “I could drown myself.”  
Villanelle’s pupils were so dilated in the dim light, latched onto Eve, that the color could not be seen now. She was almost as still as the puddle had been. Her lips were slightly parted as she listened. She leaned forward perceptibly, her fingers still delicately gripping the stem of her glass.

  
“Should I be concerned?” she whispered, feigning a pout. “You have mentioned drowning twice tonight.”

  
Eve deflected the sarcasm with a flick of her eyes.

  
“Uh huh,” she countered, “You should always be concerned. And what are you thinking about?”

  
“What am I thinking about?” Villanelle sat back, amused by the question, the corner of her mouth twitching. Eve had always found that eventually, question after question would draw out Villanelle. Villanelle did not give honest monologues, like Eve. Her mind was a constant battleground of wanting attention and resisting self-reflection. Real honesty came when she was asked sincere questions without motive, at vulnerable moments.

  
“When you’re in a place like this,” Eve continued, waving a hand around. “What do you think about?”

  
“It’s not so much ‘thinking’ like you are always doing,” Villanelle responded, finally breaking eye contact and glancing around. “More like knowing.”

  
“Fine, then. What do you know?”

  
“I know there is a security camera behind the bar and at the entrance. I know the gentleman sitting behind you is German and he is with a prostitute. I know how much her shoes cost.” She returned her gaze to Eve levelly and smiled.

  
“And what do you see when you look at me like that?” Eve slid in. The night had given her a surge of confidence and focus that she hadn’t felt since she had woken up in the hospital last year. She felt like sparring.

  
Villanelle stilled, as she did when she was caught off-guard.  
“Great hair,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Beautiful woman. Sad clothes.”

  
Eve sipped her wine, feeling both mean and happy.

  
“So then undress me,” she replied. At that moment the server leaned in to slide the charcuterie onto the table between them, a board of cured meats and cheese, slices of bread, olives. “Ooh— “, she changed the subject, “Duck.”

  
Villanelle stared. “Eve,” she said slowly, an incredulous smile breaking across her beautiful mouth, “You are flirting with me.”

  
Eve put a slice of smoked duck in her mouth, followed by a dab of goat cheese, and washed it down with her pinot noir. She felt totally weightless, like she was being physically lifted. A huge burden was falling from her.

  
“I am so happy,” she said, wiping her mouth on a napkin and smiling at Villanelle.

  
“Why?”

  
“Because,” Eve replied, sitting back and running her hands through her hair, “I’ve never done anything like this before.”


	2. Extra Brut

“I’ve never done anything like this before.”

Eve sat back and ran her fingers through her thick black hair, her incredible curls tumbling like a dark waterfall around her neck and down her collarbones. Villanelle felt a familiar squeezing in her stomach at the sight.

The fact of the matter was that Villanelle could not think of a time that she had done anything like this before, either. Yes, she loved cafés, tea rooms, wine bars. Generally, though, she was alone. She ate cake alone, watched boats on the Seine alone, drank mimosas alone, raked women with her eyes as they passed – alone.

There were only three types of people Villanelle spent time with: people she was going to kill, who did not know who she was; strangers she was going to sleep with, who did not know who she was; and people who handled her, who very much knew who she was and who invariably –she had recently realized—lied to her, used her, beat her and sequestered her in hotels.

Eve was not quite any of those things. Earlier, on the bridge, she had not called Villanelle a monster. Neither had she discouraged the self-reflection. She had related, and listened, and above all she had stayed.

Now Eve was sitting across from Villanelle in the dim romantic light of the bar, flirting, leaned back in a relaxed manner, her hands worrying the hair at the base of her neck and her throat bared. Villanelle could sense a pulse fluttering at the side of Eve’s naked throat like a tiny bird flapping its wings. The carotid artery. She imagined kissing it. She imagined the warm spray of blood if she opened it with a knife.

“I think I’m happy, too,” Villanelle finally said in response to Eve’s earlier statement.

“You think? You don’t know?” Eve pressed.

It was more of a sense of exhaustion and calm, maybe a little relief. Villanelle’s left arm was throbbing at the bicep where her wound pressed against its stitches, having been hit in the scuffle the previous night with Rhian. Her jaw was also beginning to ache where she had been punched in the side of the face. Villanelle wondered what it would be like to not be in some kind of pain for even one whole day.

“I think I could use more champagne,” Villanelle replied, only partially joking. She finished her flute and poured herself another from the bottle, enjoying as always the golden fizz and the sparkle of the wine bubbling inside the glass.

“What is it with you and champagne?” Eve asked good-naturedly.

“It is like me,” Villanelle replied easily, crossing her legs and lifting the flute to the light. “Expensive. Exciting. Sexy. Blonde.” Flirting came to her so quickly that she could not even tell herself if she was being sincere.

“Let me try it.” Eve leaned forward and plucked the stem from Villanelle’s fingers, then drained the glass in one motion, her other hand pressed into the table between them. She licked her lips and laughed, low.

“What do you think?” Villanelle asked.

“It tastes like you.” Eve stayed leaned forward, her wide brown eyes fixed on Villanelle. Villanelle had had nightmares about those eyes. Sometimes in her dreams, Eve came and sat on her and strangled her, impossibly strong, never blinking as Villanelle kicked and struggled.

“I can’t drink champagne anymore because it tastes like you,” Eve continued. “The last time I had any was when you pretended to poison me with arsenic and made me throw it up.”

Villanelle couldn’t help a loud, “Ha!” bursting from her mouth.

“And the time before that was in Paris before I stabbed you.”

“Wow,” Villanelle replied. She reached forward and placed a hand on Eve’s, which was still pressed firmly into the table between them. “You really need to live a little.”

For once, Eve agreed.

“Tell me about it.”

Eve’s phone rang in her coat pocket where the jacket was slung over the back of her chair. She stirred, glancing at it.

“You should probably ignore that,” Villanelle suggested.

“Hang on.” Eve withdrew her hand from Villanelle’s and checked the screen of her phone. “It’s Jamie.”

“I don’t even know who that is.”

“Jamie,” Eve answered the phone brusquely. Villanelle blew a raspberry through her lips, sitting back in her seat with her arms folded across her chest.

“You know it is very rude to talk on the phone at a restaurant.” Villanelle sneered as the sommelier passed their table and gave them a judgmental glance from the side of his eye. Eve, listening to the other end of the phone and gazing at the ceiling, just raised a finger at Villanelle. Villanelle could smell the sommelier’s cologne in his wake. It was called Soleil Blanc. She knew because she had tried it while looking for a new scent. It cost over £200.

“Oh, yeah. She’s with me.”

This caught Villanelle’s attention.

“Who is this Jamie, your girlfriend?”

Eve huffed and finally set the phone down between them, turning the speaker on.

“ _What the fuck happened with Carolyn?”_ Jamie’s deep male voice came tinny out of the phone speaker.

“Oh, I have plenty to catch you up on,” Eve said. “Let me guess—she wants me killed.”

_“I fucking hope not. No, she told me that she trusted you would be quiet, and would prefer if she didn’t have to see you or Villanelle again any time soon. Or maybe ever.”_

“I can’t say I’m surprised.” Eve rolled her eyes but looked serious, her full lips tense and a telltale furrow between her eyes.

_“And then she wired me £20,000 and said to pass it on to you.”_

Villanelle’s eyebrows shot up and she cocked her head at Eve, smiling.

“She’s bribing us,” Eve said flatly. Not a question.

_“I think she hopes it will help you stay out of her way for a little while.”_

“Oh, trust me,” Eve scoffed, “I’m happy to.”

_“I might have a proposition for you two. An idea of where to go. A job.”_

“I’m not Villanelle’s handler,” Eve interjected immediately, making eye contact with Villanelle. “She goes where she wants.” Villanelle felt a pressure in her lower stomach like someone was stepping on it.

“I want to go with you,” she said without hesitation.

_“We can talk about it at the office tomorrow morning. Are you going to stay at my place tonight?”_

“That’s probably not a good idea. I’ll figure something out,” Eve replied.

 _“Watch out for yourself.”_ Jamie hung up.

Eve shook her head as she replaced her phone in her pocket, tousled her curls absently with one hand and took a deep drink of her pinot noir with the other.

“So,” Villanelle said, giving what she thought was her most winning smile, “Are you having sex with him?”

Eve laughed genuinely and shook her head again.

“No.”

“Not even sometimes? Tell me you’re getting it somewhere.”

“Hasn’t anyone told you that not everything is about sex?”

“No one who has met me would ever believe that.” Villanelle winked at the German man who had been eyeing her hungrily over Eve’s shoulder for the past fifteen minutes. He was greying and had a full beard, sharply trimmed. Eve turned in her chair to see who Villanelle was looking at, then rolled her eyes.

“Really? Doesn’t seem like your type.”

“You don’t know my type,” Villanelle countered, putting an olive seductively into her mouth as the man watched. Eve was right, though. He wasn’t her type. She only pretended to be interested in older men. They disgusted her. They were her absolute favorite to kill. She slipped the olive pit in and out of her lips with the tip of her tongue, making eye contact with him, and imagined gouging one of his blue eyes out with her thumb.

Eve was right about something else. Not everything was about sex. It had been months since Villanelle had felt like having sex. Even when she had had the urge to fuck someone, she had become too tired and bored to follow through. In Barcelona she had brought a woman back to her flat, but did not revel in the woman’s wonder at the tiled floor, the high ceilings, the chandelier and the pillars. She had stripped the woman naked and pushed her up onto a table in the foyer, but when she slipped her fingers into the woman and started fucking her, one hand on the expensive wallpaper behind her and the table banging against the plaster, she had felt completely numb. Bored. She had thought about killing the woman; it would be so easy to strangle her—her head was thrown back against the wall, her eyes closed. Villanelle had not liked this feeling. She did not enjoy killing people she had sex with. It ruined the…palette. She liked watching them walk away with a light in their eyes that had not been there before. Like she had infused them with more life and fire than they’d had before. It was like the opposite of killing, but just as powerful. She had abruptly pulled her hand away from the woman and pushed her out of the flat, then drunk an entire bottle of champagne and thrown the empty bottle from her balcony onto a car parked on the street below.

Of course, she would not admit this to Eve.

Eve interrupted her reverie by reaching across the table and tapping under Villanelle’s chin firmly. Villanelle let the olive pit drop from her lips onto the table, and looked again at Eve, who appeared unperturbed by the show.

“What?” Villanelle asked defensively.

“Do you have a place?”

“Now that you mention it,” she replied, cringing a little, “I maybe cannot go back to my place.”

“What happened?” Eve asked. Eve always wanted to know what had happened. She always wanted to know everything. Villanelle still didn’t feel like telling her.

“There was a little accident? With…a train?”

“Jesus.”

“I have my bags checked at the desk of L’Oscar. I put cash down for a room. I will stay at a different hotel every night until…” she shrugged. Until the Twelve found her and sank her in the Thames. Until she left the city.

“Can we stay there tonight?” Eve asked. She seemed earnest, without motive. Villanelle felt a thrill in her throat, but it was dampened. She had spent so much time in hotels, lying face down on the bed, staring at the patterns of various carpets. Yes, she wanted to stay with Eve. No, she was not ready to return to a hotel.

“Okay,” she said slowly, “But…can we go somewhere else first? You know it is only 9 o’clock.”

Eve glanced in surprise at the wall, looking for a clock. Villanelle held out her wrist and showed Eve her watch.

“It gets dark early,” she offered. Eve gave her a strange look.

“Where do you want to go?”

Villanelle hesitated, chewed on the crust of a piece of bread.

“Can we see a movie together?”

“You want to see a movie.”

“I do.”

“Which movie?”

Villanelle drew a complete blank. She didn’t even know where one went to see movies around here.

“I don’t know what kind of movies I like,” she finally admitted to Eve. Eve gazed at Villanelle, looking fascinated, her mind working on something. Finally she bit the edge of her bottom lip and reached again for her phone.

“Hold on,” she said, typing something in. She put the phone up to her ear again as Villanelle waited. “Hi, yes. What are you showing in French?”


	3. Retourne-toi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 10 points if you know the film. Heck, take 28 points.

Eve found Ciné Lumiere modern and small compared to the wine bar, but she felt more at home. Confident. She loved movies and went out to see them all the time while Niko had been in hospital.

She liked documentaries. She had made the rounds of independent theaters in London. The bottle of wine she had finished before she and Villanelle left the bar was sloshing warmly in her stomach. Her excited buzz had worn off in the cab, and she felt a sleepiness threatening to take over her. In the back seat of the cab, she had slumped in the leather seat and leaned against Villanelle’s shoulder, letting her smell overpower the sour stench of the car. She smelled like wet pavement and decaying leaves stirred up from the sidewalk. Villanelle had stayed very still and rested her cheek on the top of Eve’s head.

Now, at the theater, other patrons milled against the counter of the café, murmuring and drinking wine, absorbed in their conversations that were punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter. For the second time that night, Eve thought how she had been like them once. They didn’t see blood on their fingernails under the fluorescent lighting in the bathroom. Eve bought the movie tickets as well as a slice of cake from the café for Villanelle, who had been gazing at the menu pointedly.

“Can you believe they sell shepherd’s pie?” Villanelle asked, turning away from the counter with a plate of ginger cake, looking at it eagerly.

Eve shuddered.

“I’d be happy to never see shepherd’s pie again,” she remarked, looking around the lobby for a sign to direct them. Villanelle’s eyes bulged.

“You don’t like shepherd’s pie?” she asked, staring.

“I’m so fucking sick of shepherd’s pie. I would pay money to never eat it again.”

Villanelle barked with laughter, pausing in her tracks.

“Are you serious?”

Eve stopped as well and looked at Villanelle, confused.

“Yeah, I…” She trailed off, recalling that Niko’s shepherd’s pie was what she had fed Villanelle the first time they were alone together in her home. At the time, she would pawn off the leftovers to anyone who would eat it. There was always curried cold meat and mashed potatoes in her fridge. Villanelle had eaten it with gusto. Actually, she had never seen Villanelle eat anything without gusto. It dawned on her.

“You like shepherd’s pie, don’t you?” she asked Villanelle. Villanelle blinked once, looking conflicted, the plate of cake held out in front of her like an offering.

“I love it,” she confessed, then laughed again. “You are really weird.”

Eve wasn’t sure what was going on, but she was sure that she didn’t care. She had another glass of wine from the café in her hand. She was warm. She was taking Villanelle somewhere for Villanelle’s sake only, following an urge she had had for a long time to give Villanelle a gift. Villanelle had given her so many gifts. Gifts weren’t really Eve’s forte.

Maybe the film was as much a gift for Eve as it was for Villanelle. When the lights lowered and the opening credits appeared, Eve felt a deep sense of peace and relaxation roll over her.

The events of the night had scared her, but she felt safe next to Villanelle. Someone in the theater coughed twice in the silence, and there was a low whispering of people settling into their seats and conversing. The film had no score, it seemed, and took place in the 18th century. There was a great rustling of dresses onscreen, the sounds of breathing, the clatter of footsteps and the roar of the ocean. The wave of sleepiness washed over Eve again. There were no subtitles, and Eve did not speak French. She let her eyes flutter closed for a moment. Behind her eyelids, she saw Carolyn shoot a man in the face, the blood spray against the wall behind him and soak into the couch.

Eve shuddered, and to make herself feel better she remembered the way that Villanelle had cut Aaron Peel’s throat when he suggested hurting Eve, sliding a carving knife over his throat and shoving his face into a mirror. She leaned toward Villanelle, feeling protected by her presence.

“Wow,” said Villanelle loudly after the first scene, “It’s really QUIET in here!” She took a large bite of her cake so that her fork scraped against her front teeth.

There was a hissing and annoyed muttering from the audience near them. Eve didn’t bother to nudge or chastise Villanelle. After all, Villanelle’s eyes were locked on the screen already.

The rhythm of the French soothed Eve, despite her lack of understanding. She let the sleepiness slide over her with the sounds of crackling fire, of women speaking levelly to each other, of rustling pages. She laid her head against Villanelle’s shoulder again and fell asleep.

Eve woke, startled, to the sudden sound of orchestral music pounding in her ears. She sat up, disoriented, and remembered where she was. Violin squealed. Onscreen, a blonde woman stared at the orchestra, her chest heaving, tears in her eyes, tears running into the corners of her mouth. Eve stirred and looked up at Villanelle.

Villanelle could have been a painting. She was fixated on the scene in front of her, breathing deeply and evenly, hot tears coursing down her cheeks. The freckles at the corner of her eye glistened. A loose strand of hair that strayed from her low, messy bun stuck to the side of her cheek. Her lips were slightly parted.

Unsure, Eve looked from the screen to Villanelle and back again, wondering what she had missed. She had never seen Villanelle cry when she wasn’t performing for someone. A confused and creeping dread crawled through her stomach. 

The music crescendoed and the woman onscreen took a last few gasping breaths before breaking into a tired smile. The screen went black. The theater, which had been filled with soft murmuring and a susurrus when Eve had fallen asleep earlier, was silent as the credits rolled except for the clear sound of someone sobbing quietly in the back. Villanelle did not stop looking at the screen.

“Are you okay?” Eve finally whispered, sitting up straight and brushing her curls away from her face.

Villanelle’s eyes were shining and unblinking, her pupils dilated. Lost. Unsettled, Eve looked around again. Someone sniffed and blew out a shaky breath behind them. Finally, Villanelle turned to look at Eve.

“I think this is my favorite movie.”

“Oh.” For once, Eve did not know what was going on. Villanelle was looking at her with an expression that was unreadable. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” Villanelle smiled.

“I mean, in the movie.”

“Nothing,” Villanelle repeated, but then her mouth worked with emotion and she added, “You stayed. You turned around.”

“I…” Eve shook her head slightly. The bridge? “Yes.”

Villanelle placed her hand on Eve’s cheek and kissed her, gently and deeply. Her wet lashes blinked against Eve’s eyelids as their lips met.

Eve’s sleepiness evaporated. Her heart hammered and a hot flush bloomed up the sides of her throat. The softness and smoothness of Villanelle’s mouth and cheek were shocking against her own. The texture was thrilling—like the softness behind Eve’s ears when she tucked her hair back. She wanted to be touched there; she turned her face firmly into Villanelle’s hand until the fingers ran across her earlobe and then into her hair, across her scalp. A twinge shot from her abdomen down into her legs. She leaned into the softness and bit Villanelle’s lower lip, hard.

Villanelle pulled away, looking at Eve with wonder, a furrow between her eyes but a surprised smile on her face. She touched her bottom lip with one finger and drew it away quickly, as if to check if it were bleeding. They were both breathing heavily. Eve became aware again of their surroundings, of the people around them who were now shuffling out of their seats, gathering their coats and bags, putting on their hats and beginning to discuss the film.

Earlier in the night, standing on the bridge in the watery reflective darkness, Eve had been overpowered by her lack of a future. She had felt like an empty hole that had no bottom. This feeling had now been utterly swept away, like Villanelle had brushed cobwebs out of Eve’s chest with one movement of her hand. Eve was almost fifty, and she was feeling something completely new for the first time. She felt as if she was being invented. A familiar change came over her—she saw herself through Villanelle’s eyes.

The first time this had happened was when she had tried on the clothes Villanelle sent her in the stolen suitcase. Eve had looked at the shoes: was this how Villanelle saw her feet? She had seen herself in the mirror and run her hands down the sides of her own body. She had heard a crashing in her ears. She saw herself as Villanelle must see her, the smooth lines of her hips, the gorgeous dip of her neck, the curve of her ass. She had even marked herself with Villanelle’s own scent.

For the next year, until the perfume had run out, Eve would wear it when she traveled for work, when Niko would not notice. She had liked to dab it on her wrists before she boarded a train, so that she could lean against the window with her chin in her palm, close her eyes and bring back the memory of the first time she wore it—pinned, wet and terrified against her refrigerator, a knife to her sternum and Villanelle’s arm trapping her. How Villanelle had looked, her eyes wild, a cold sweat under the armpits of her white t-shirt. She had reminded Eve at the time of a drug addict. She had made Eve feel like an object. Eve would breathe in the scent and try to bring that feeling back. Of being swallowed by Villanelle.

Now, in the theater, this was different. Eve felt as if it were she who would swallow Villanelle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little aside:
> 
> I felt the need to include a movie-watching scene as for a variety of reasons I think it has been a long time coming.  
> A note on my choice of film (spoilers):  
> I am very compelled by the parallels between POALOF and Killing Eve. They both include motifs of watching each other, silent mutual understandings, homoerotic tension between women, questions of consent, etc. They also both share a central conflict in the romance: essentially, the impossibility of a "normal" future together and the need to reconcile that.   
> In the film, the characters make "the poet's choice" and content themselves with the memories that they have of each other.  
> In 3x08, when our characters both make the choice to turn around and look at each other, we get the sense that they are making the opposite choice--namely, that they cannot be content with only the memories. Perhaps in this moment they are both Orpheus and Eurydice simultaneously. That is, they are both choosing and inviting the abyss.
> 
> Let me know your thoughts about parallels between POALOF and Killing Eve in the comments below or message me. (wait...can you message on AO3? Idk I'm new to all this halp)


	4. Velvet

By the time they reached the hotel it was well after midnight, and the deep exhaustion that Villanelle had felt for weeks threatened to stifle her. She wanted to change the bandage on her arm and wished she had some kind of anesthetic to wash it in. Expensive jackets were not designed to give breathing space to stab wounds.

She smiled cheekily at the concierge and put on a French accent, as much for fun as to disguise her identity. Her current passport did not claim French nationality, but hotels did not check these types of things. She tipped the concierge generously and obtained a set of toiletries for Eve, who had nothing with her at all but her purse and cell phone.

“I didn’t think you could pay for hotels like this in cash,” Eve remarked as they walked brusquely through the lobby.

“You can do anything if you pay double, tip generously and you have my tits,” Villanelle responded with complete sincerity. She enjoyed the look of awe on Eve’s face as Eve gazed into the reading room they were walking past. The floors were covered in a lush oriental rug, the seats upholstered in velvet, the walls paneled in ornate wood and lined with glass cases holding antique books.

“£20,000 wouldn’t last you a week,” Eve mused.

“£20,000 is nothing. 20,000 is a joke.”

“Carolyn works for MI6, not the mafia,” Eve replied. “She gave us as much as she could, I think. Probably more.”

“And we will take it,” Villanelle replied frankly, leading the way toward the suite. “There’s plenty of places where it will go a lot farther than in London. I want to know what your friend Jamie has in mind.”

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

Villanelle paused abruptly, looking Eve in the eye.

“I want to go with you. But I don’t want to kill anyone.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Jamie is a journalist,” Eve finally said.

Villanelle snorted softly through her nose and resumed walking. She wasn’t sure whether to trust Eve in this moment. Everyone she had trusted had betrayed her. Everyone she had wanted around had only wanted her around because of whose head she was willing to bash into the floor.

The film had shaken her deeply. At first she had simply reveled in the feeling of Eve sleeping against her—the warmth and intimacy had filled her like a hot liquid, and she had sat completely still for the whole two hours, hardly daring to uncross her legs so that she would not disturb Eve, like trying not to cause a ripple on the surface of a serene lake.

As the movie went on, though, Villanelle had felt something else. A nausea. The film had reminded her of Anna. She did not regret Anna’s death; she hadn’t loved Anna for a long time. For the first time, however, she wondered what would have been different if she had allowed Anna to choose her own life. Villanelle knew what it was like to have her choices stripped away. Perhaps they would both be alive and living in separate cities, and if they saw each other at the orchestra they would be filled with pleasant memories of their time together.

The upright piano they had had sex on for the first time. The handprint Villanelle left on Anna’s ass. Their double footprints in the snow as they walked in tandem down the street. Now Villanelle was the only person on earth who carried these memories. She had taken that choice away from Anna, and simultaneously herself.

Villanelle had always liked herself. Loved herself. She knew that she was the best at what she did. She knew that she was the most beautiful woman in any room. Lately, though, she did not like herself so much. She had come to understand that no one she met liked her once they knew who she was. She was an object, a tool. The only thing she was valued for was the worth that she had for others.

“Wow,” Eve said as they opened the door to their room. “How do you sleep in here?”

The walls were painted a brilliant scarlet. The bedspread was gold damask over creamy cotton sheets. There was a chaise lounge at the foot of the bed, more velvet armchairs, and golden drapes. The lights were set in sconces in the walls.

“A hot bath and some vodka usually help,” Villanelle replied, moving inside and turning on the lights in each area. There was indeed a freestanding tub in the bathroom, gleaming amidst the black marble walls and floor. Villanelle caught sight of herself in the mirror and cringed a little. Her blonde hair was messy, flying out of the bun she had wrapped it in that morning. She pulled out the tie and ran her fingers through it, but it did not seem to help.

In the adjacent room, Eve was quietly exploring each nook, picking up books and vases, lifting the table runner on the console, drawing aside the curtains.

“Looking for bugs?” Villanelle asked, leaning against the doorway.

“Should I?”

“It’s not possible,” Villanelle replied. “No one knows we are here. If we were here again tomorrow night—maybe.”

“I’m just looking.” Eve ran her eyes across the enormous bed. Villanelle knew from personal experience that a mattress that large could sleep at least four people. “Can I sleep with you tonight?”

“Of course.” Villanelle shifted toward Eve and held out her hand. Eve took it, hesitantly. “If you want me to sleep on the floor, though, I will,” Villanelle said gallantly. She had suddenly remembered the time when she woke up to Konstantin sleeping on the floor next to her hotel bed. She had felt disgusted at the time but had admitted to herself later that nothing could have made her feel safer. She wanted Eve to feel safe.

Villanelle knew by this time that there was no point in forcing her way with Eve. Every time she had tried, it had turned out for the worst. She had tried to fuck Eve; Eve had stabbed her. She had tried to kill Eve; Eve had come back from the dead. Villanelle was not used to this. Normally, she knew exactly what to do to manipulate people. She got everything she wanted.

If she wanted to fuck someone, she fucked them. If she wanted them to come, they came. If she wanted them to cry, they cried. If she wanted them to bleed, they bled. If things did not go according to plan…Villanelle killed them. It was all very nice and neat. It could be wrapped up like a package. Not Eve, though. Eve bit back.

Villanelle went to her bags, which the concierge had sent up as soon as they arrived. She dug through them for a comb, then sat on the largest piece of luggage and began to draw the comb through her blonde hair. She was dying for a bath and for a good night’s sleep.

Eve had removed her parka and was now exploring in her just her t-shirt and pants. She opened the drawer of the side table next to the bed, closed it again, ran her hands across the embroidered fabric of the bedspread, then collapsed facedown onto the surface, groaning.

Villanelle raised her eyebrows and smiled knowingly. The exhaustion runs deep. Eve turned her head so that her cheek rested against the damask and one dark eye peered at Villanelle. Villanelle pretended not to notice. She put her comb aside and started to take off her coat, which she had kept on all night. She had not wanted anyone to see the knotted scar on her arm with the black stitches bristling crookedly from it like spiders.

She undid the complicated ties that held the throat of the coat together, then pulled the whole thing over her head when it was loosened. Underneath, she was wearing a white short-sleeved blouse with one button at the throat. She hung the coat up and then perched again on the suitcase to inspect her arm, peeling the bandage carefully back with her tongue at the corner of her mouth.

She had done a totally shit job at stitching it. Not only would it certainly scar, but the stitches themselves would leave scars as well. She inspected the puckered gash closely and poked at it. Was it already time to have them removed? Should she cut them out? She flexed her bicep and felt the stiffness of the cut.

“Jesus,” she heard Eve say. “What happened?”

Villanelle looked up to see Eve still watching her.

“I made a mistake,” she replied simply. “Involving scissors.”

Eve slid herself into a sitting position on the bed, one arm propping herself up.

“Do you want to see mine?” she asked, her voice low.

“Your…scissors?” Villanelle joked, unmoving. She did want to see Eve’s scar. She wanted to see it very, very badly.

Without invitation, Eve turned her back to Villanelle and pulled her t-shirt over her head, then swept her thick hair away from her shoulder and around the side of her neck. A thin vertical pink scar ran over her left shoulder blade next to the strap of her bra. Villanelle stirred. She left the bandage dangling on her arm and stepped closer to the bed get a better view. It seemed so neat. So precise. The scar held nothing of the feelings that had driven Villanelle to shoot Eve in the back. It was cold and lifeless. Still, it was…Villanelle reached out to touch it. Eve tensed when she felt Villanelle’s finger on her skin.

“I can’t believe this didn’t kill you,” Villanelle said, incredulous.

Eve turned her cheek over her shoulder toward Villanelle, her eyes narrowed.

“Turns out you’re not a very good shot.”

Villanelle recoiled, annoyed. She tore the remainder of the bandage from her arm and walked to the bathroom. Eve was such a dick. She should have shot her in the head. That would have killed her. She threw the bandage in the trash and took a deep breath, bracing her arms against the sink.

She hated when Eve was right. Villanelle was a terrible shot. She only shot people at point-blank range; otherwise, she missed nearly every time. Knives were much more up her alley. She could throw a knife and hit someone in the throat without fail, a product of her training in Russia. Guns, though—they were useful, but Villanelle did not like them. They were somehow too loud and masculine. She did not like the high ringing in her ears from the shot or the sting in her palms at the recoil. She did not like how impersonal they were. Distant. She liked to be close to someone when she watched the light fade from their eyes.

“The bullet lodged in my shoulder blade.”

Eve was standing in the bathroom door, still shirtless. There was no exit wound on the front of her chest. She continued.

“They told me that a higher caliber bullet or a different shell would have completely torn my back apart. If you had shot me and I had gone to the hospital immediately, they would have just dug it out and sent me on my way the next day. But I lost so much blood that it was a ‘miracle’ I survived. ‘A miracle’, everyone keeps saying.”

“You should have died.” Villanelle said the meanest thing she could think of, though she wasn’t feeling mean. Eve did not retreat. Instead, she moved into the bathroom behind Villanelle and approached slowly and quietly. She reached out carefully and slid her arms around Villanelle from behind, leaning against her where Villanelle was propped against the sink, and held her around her stomach. Eve’s cheek rested just at Villanelle’s shoulder blade. Villanelle could feel her jaw work as she talked.

“I wished I had died every single day for a long time,” Eve admitted, but she held Villanelle firmly. Villanelle felt her inhale slowly. Eve loosed one hand from where it was wrapped around Villanelle’s stomach and slid it down toward her waistband. Villanelle felt a throb between her legs. Eve grasped the edge of Villanelle’s blouse between her fingers and drew it up, sliding her hand underneath and up toward her ribcage. Villanelle shivered.

Eve turned her around gently with a tug of her arms so that the small of Villanelle’s back was against the edge of the sink and raised her shirt. Goosebumps broke out over all of Villanelle’s skin. She felt cold. Her nipples stiffened. Eve knelt down and looked at the pink scar on the left side of Villanelle’s abdomen for a moment, then leaned in and brushed her lips across it. Looking down, Villanelle could only see a mass of dark curls. The dry brush of lips became a wet kiss. Villanelle inhaled shakily. She could feel the warm tip of Eve’s tongue running across her skin.

Eve stopped and straightened herself to look Villanelle in the face.

“So we both have scars,” she said simply. “Change,” she urged Villanelle, motioning at her, “And let’s go to bed.”

When Villanelle emerged from the bathroom, Eve was sitting on the bed in her t-shirt and underwear, scribbling onto a notepad with her phone lying on the bedspread next to her.

“I don’t have my phone charger,” Eve explained, “And my phone is about to die. So here is Jamie’s number, just in case.” She ripped the page from the pad and placed it with her phone on the floor beside the bed, then resettled herself against the pillows. She absent-mindedly reached her right hand up to massage the muscle of her left shoulder, and her eyes closed.

Villanelle stole around the edges of the suite, turning the lights back off. Her anger had faded, and she again felt careful not to disturb the calm. When she crawled into bed, Eve slid under the covers as well. In the darkness, their breathing seemed magnified and the rustling of the fabric was loud.

Villanelle lay on her side, shifting uncomfortably in her tank top and shorts, trying not to put pressure on her bad arm. Usually, she slept naked. She did not like to wake in twisted, sweaty fabric. It made her feel trapped. The scar on her abdomen still felt hot from Eve’s attention. She thought of the last time that she and Eve had been lying on a bed together, and her heart hammered again.

She still felt on fire with panic at the memory sometimes: her bloody hand slipping on the trigger of the gun as she fired rounds at spots in her vision; the searing pain through her stomach, lungs and pelvis; the shock. The worst part was that she had already been beaten several times in the days just before Eve stabbed her, and she would be hit and strangled again only days after. She had been completely helpless. She might as well have been dead.

She felt Eve sidle toward her under the sheets. Both of their breaths sounded ragged in the silence of the room. Eve passed her hand over Villanelle’s side and pressed gently against her from behind, asking for permission with her body language. Villanelle relaxed back into Eve’s thin body and felt Eve’s heart beating against her back.

Villanelle ached all over. Her stomach seemed to hurt where Eve’s hand rested. Her throat was closing. Her left arm was keeping up its constant throb. She was aching between her legs. She felt a headache building. She wanted to cry again. Why was she always crying lately?

She stroked Eve’s hand with her thumb and counted Eve’s pulse from the heartbeat against her back until it was so calm that she could not feel it any longer. Eve was asleep. Villanelle resisted the urge to get up and masturbate in the bathroom. She squeezed Eve’s hand. She fell asleep.


	5. Butter

In Eve’s dream, the floor was covered in broken glass. She and Kenny walked on it and gasped. They looked at their feet and hands—shards of bright clear glass fell from them with droplets of blood. She tried to dig the pieces from the sole of Kenny’s foot as he twitched.

 _-We have to clean up this glass-_ she (Kenny?) (Mom?) said. Eve swept up the glass with her hands and cleared it away, but when she turned around, the floor was covered again with glittering shards.

_-No, that’s not right-_

Eve woke as she tried to reach out, and she grasped at smooth cold cloth. She opened her eyes. Grey, muted light filtered through the windows into the room. She heard footsteps and a clinking noise. Sitting up, she peered around. The memories of the previous night came back to her with a hot rush. She sat up and gathered the mass of her hair around her head with both hands, breathing deeply.

Villanelle stood in the corner over a stand bearing a silver dish, buttering toast. She was wearing one of the hotel’s white bathrobes and her blonde hair hung limp and wet, clinging to her neck. Eve stared silently, taking her in. The structure of her face was exquisite. Each time, it seemed like a shock. In this completely unguarded moment, Villanelle was consumed with focus on the piece of bread that she was scraping a knife across. What looked to Eve like emotions passed across her face as she examined the toast, lifted it to her mouth and took a huge bite. Her mouth full, chewing with satisfaction, Villanelle turned to glance at the bed and saw that Eve was awake. She stopped and smiled; her cheeks puffed out with bread.

“Hi, Eve.”

Eve could not feel the least bit embarrassed about last night. She had been drunk, tired, infused with a sense that her actions did not matter and a long-lost desire for touch and warmth. In the past, whenever she had pictured being with Villanelle, Villanelle held her roughly in her fantasies, scratched her, gripped her so tightly that she left bruises. She ran blades across Eve’s inner thighs, pressed her hot tongue between Eve's legs and stayed there.

In reality, Villanelle had held very still and seemed distant, oddly respectful when Eve had come onto her. In a way, Eve was glad. A lot had happened in the past week. Even the act of holding Villanelle was an epiphany. As she had struggled to stay awake the previous night, her arms around Villanelle, she had breathed in her scent and smelled a chapel—smoke, a chorus, organ music, a thunderous vibration. Eve knew that something had changed within Villanelle but hadn’t yet identified what it was.

Jamie was in his office working alone when Eve and Villanelle arrived at Bitter Pill. Eve was wearing her clothes from the day before; Villanelle was dressed casually in a dark bomber jacket, high-waisted pants and high-top sneakers. Her pale hair was down, tucked behind her ears, and she wore a blank expression as she looked around the office, not telegraphing that she had been there only the previous night or ever before in her life.

Jamie swiveled in his chair to watch them approach, a subtle look of concern passing over his face. Eve knew that it was concern for her and not for himself, so she flashed what she hoped was a reassuring smile at him as she opened the door to his office.

“I have so many questions,” Jamie stated without greeting.

“Don’t we all,” Eve responded.

“Are you going to tell me what happened with Carolyn?” Jamie countered.

“Did you get me a doughnut?” Eve fired, looking pointedly at the half-eaten pastry wrapped in a napkin on Jamie’s desk.

Jamie smirked.

“Next time.”

“Then I’ll tell you next time.”

Jamie sighed through his nose and inspected the two of them.

Eve knew that she looked more put together than she had in any of the time that Jamie had known her. She had taken a shower at the hotel, brushed her teeth thoroughly and even put on some of Villanelle’s mascara. She had eaten richly buttered toast for breakfast. The salt and fat had slid across her tongue smoothly. The butter had reminded her of the texture of Villanelle’s bottom lip: soft, warm. Lickable.

“What’s the job? Do I want to know?” Eve asked. Villanelle was running her hand across a stack of papers on the side desk, seemingly distracted.

“It’s not really a job,” Jamie admitted.

“And? I should be interested…why?” Eve asked, feeling offended. Jamie shifted in his seat and leaned forward.

“You two need to leave. As soon as possible. I know somewhere that you can go for cheap. I have the £20,000 for you—”

Villanelle interrupted, turning from the side desk to make eye contact with Jamie.

“£20,000 is nothing. Tell me something else.”

Eve watched their gazes meet with amusement. She felt a guilty pleasure at seeing Villanelle’s cold stare scathe someone other than her. It was cathartic. Jamie’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m just trying to help,” he said in a low voice. “Whether you do this or not—is not my problem.”

Eve intervened.

“I want to hear about it,” she said. Jamie continued to look skeptically at Villanelle. They were sizing each other up. Villanelle perched on the corner of the side desk and gave him a fake, patronizing smile. Jamie sneered back.

“Look,” Jamie began, turning back to Eve, “This is not a money-making opportunity per se. I just think you could kill two birds with one stone. You need to make yourself scarce for a while. I want someone in Prague.”

“Prague?” Villanelle jumped into the conversation again, looking intrigued.

“There’s a fighting ring,” Jamie explained. His expression was guarded. “People pay a lot of money to watch and bet on it. We did a piece last year on it. It was a little…sensational.”

“What kind of fighting?” Eve interjected.

“Oh, whatever. Martial arts. Krav Magra. Muay Thai. Boxing. If they can match the fighters, they put on a show. It’s just a little…you know. Beyond the law.”

“Krav Magra?” Villanelle scoffed.

“That’s funny to you?” Jamie asked. He reached for a file and placed it between them, raising his eyebrows. “Since we did the piece, three of the fighters have been killed in knife fights.”

Eve flipped open the manila folder. The photo on top was of a carved-up man prostrate on the floor of a ring. He had cuts across his forearms, hands and face. He had been stabbed several times in the stomach. There was a pool of blood in the ring as well as sprays of blood across the mat and ropes.

“Public?” Eve asked, taken aback.

“No, no. Found later. No one saw anything. They say.”

“They’re betting on knife fights,” Eve guessed. Villanelle laughed loudly next to them.

“Are you serious?”

Jamie and Eve turned their gaze onto Villanelle with a studied silence. Eve knew well enough by now to listen when Villanelle was worked up. She was usually right. Jamie was displaying excellent judgment; he kept quiet.

“There is no such thing as a knife fight,” Villanelle said.

Jamie leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him.

“Why?”

In a flash, Villanelle was next to Jamie with a switchblade to his throat. Jamie’s eyes bulged.

“Because only an idiot would show you their knife before they cut you,” Villanelle hissed. “There is no ‘winning’ with knives. You are being cut or you are cutting. There is no fight. Once I am this close,” she leaned in and her nostrils flared as she sniffed the side of Jamie’s grizzled neck, “You are dead. It’s not a fight. There is no such thing.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop. No one moved.

“Okay,” said Jamie, remarkably calm. Eve could see his pulse beating at the edge of Villanelle’s blade. “There is no such thing.”

Villanelle sat back, satisfied, and put away her knife.

Eve spread the photos and the papers from the file out onto the desk.

“You’re saying that this cannot be a real knife fight?” She directed her question toward Villanelle, but her whole focus was on the gruesome photos, the viscous pools of blood and the spatter.

“Eve. If you are close enough to stab someone with a knife, they are dead like that—” she snapped. “If you have a knife and you try to fight someone with a knife? You have ever seen a blender?” Villanelle scoffed again.

“You can’t disarm them?”

Villanelle laughed. “No way.”

“You disarmed me once.”

“Eve.” Villanelle rolled her eyes. “Your hands were shaking and you are totally incompetent.”

Eve felt a hot flush creep up her face.

“If someone attacks you with a knife, you are dead. That’s it. Unless you run or you have a better weapon. You can’t ‘fight’ them. You will get cut to shit.”

“You’ve attacked me with knives and I’ve survived,” Eve posited hesitantly. Villanelle laughed.

“No. I threatened you with a knife. Very effective. Right? You did what I wanted. We did not fight.”

Eve admitted to herself that this was true. Jamie was sitting with his elbows on his knees, looking back and forth between Eve and Villanelle in silent wonder.

“But what if I was experienced?” Eve asked. “Trained?” Her mind was shuttling through possibilities.

Villanelle’s nostrils flared with annoyance. She brought out the switchblade again, and Jamie leaned back quickly, though the knife was not aimed at anyone. Villanelle flipped it open and closed, then spoke.

“I am trained,” she finally explained. “I can cut you once—" she motioned with the blade “—and you bleed to death.” Eve knew this was true. Her favorite kill of Villanelle’s was still the first she had studied.

“But,” Villanelle went on, “if you are with someone who is desperate—desperate—they act wild, like an animal. You want to be near someone flailing with a knife? No. I can’t make that cut if they know I have a knife. No.”

“This is perfect,” Jamie interjected. Villanelle and Eve, who had been making hungry eye-contact, remembered again that Jamie was in the room. They turned to him. He continued in a low voice.

“The man who runs the ring doesn’t think they are real fights either. He contacted me. He knows that we are good at getting information because of how much we published last year. He wants to know why his fighters are being killed.”

“They’re being set up,” Eve mused, a familiar sense of excitement beginning to course through her. She went back to the file and spread out some of the photos. “Someone has a grudge against him. Or—” she snapped her fingers, standing up straight again. “He owes someone money. No—he would know that. How are they getting the fighters alone? Maybe they’re trying to turn him against someone else in the ring…” Possibilities began to flood her mind so rapidly that she spun around looking for a pen, needing to write something down.

“So, you’ll go?” Jamie asked, smiling. “He has offered a lot of money if we dig up anything that stops the stabbings.”

“Wait,” interjected Villanelle. “What exactly will we be doing?”

“You fight,” answered Jamie simply. “Eve poses as your agent. She makes good with the other agents. Gets them drunk. Listens to them talk.”

Villanelle’s eyebrows shot through the roof and she grinned, then laughed.

“I fight? No.”

“There’s no danger in the real fights.”

“I already have three fake teeth,” Villanelle said, narrowing her eyes. “I like the rest.”

“It’s just a bit of boxing.”

“I’m injured.”

Jamie looked skeptical.

“You look fine to me.”

“I always look devastating,” Villanelle replied. “I am injured. If you want me to kill someone…” she shrugged. “Easy. If you want me to fight someone and they live? Not so easy. Okay? So which do you want?”

Jamie was at a loss. He pursed his lips and glanced at Eve. Villanelle was frowning, hunched with her hands in the pockets of her bomber jacket. Eve turned slowly to Villanelle and moved her hand from the file to the spot where Villanelle’s thighs rested against the side desk.

“How much time do you need?” Eve asked. “To be ready for one fight?”

Villanelle was silent.

“I’ll be with you,” Eve continued slowly. “The whole time.”

Swiftly, Villanelle swiveled and punched Eve. Stars exploded in Eve’s eyes and she cried out, clapping her hands over her face. She felt hot liquid run from her sinuses down her nasal canal and coughed, then groaned.

“As long as you know what it feels like,” Villanelle sneered, then stalked out of the office with her hands back in her pockets.

Eve stood up straight and checked her nose for blood. It was running profusely but not bleeding. She sniffed.

“That,” Jamie said, looking after Villanelle, “is one hot woman.”

Eve smiled and wiped her streaming eyes.

“God, I know.”

“Do you think that was a yes?”

Eve nodded. Yes.


	6. Room Service

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: le smut. le pussy.

The trip plan was complicated for what would regularly be a direct two-hour flight. Villanelle was grateful for Eve’s logical mind and light packing. Eve did not argue any of Villanelle’s suggestions, but added her own insight.

They would both book flights to Vienna, laying over in Paris for one night. In Paris, Villanelle would retrieve an old passport and make contact with someone she thought might start working on an ID for Eve. Once in Vienna they would rent a car with cash and drive over the border to the Czech Republic, working their way northwest again to Prague. Even if Eve’s passport was flagged, which they both doubted, there would be no way for anyone to guess where they were headed. Once in Prague, Eve would not use her cards or show her real ID anywhere, for any reason. If someone did want to track Villanelle through Eve, they needed to make it difficult. Let them scour the Czech countryside for Eve if they wanted. Winter was approaching and soon the country would be knee-deep in snow and flocking with tourists coming to cross-country ski in the rolling hills.

Villanelle would train for four weeks before a fight. Eve would make contact with the fight runner.

Another benefit to staying the first night in Paris was that Villanelle had been overcome with a desperate urge to shop for Eve. The moment they left Roissy, Villanelle took Eve to her favorite shopping district and quickly loaded up on the essentials. She forced herself to stick with what she knew made sense for the situation. Nothing flashy. Earth tones. Eve needed to look like she had money while still looking practical. Slacks and flats. An expensive but subtle watch. Clingy, cashmere turtlenecks. One exquisite dress, just in case.

“Let me see,” Villanelle called out.

They were in their hotel in Paris, a purposefully much more nondescript place than in London the night before. Trying to conserve cash, flying under the radar, they had booked two connecting rooms. Eve was trying on one of her outfits in the adjoining room while Villanelle lay on her bed, staring at the swirled ceiling texture. _I hate hotels,_ she admitted to herself, nodding and pouting although there was no one there to see it. _I fucking hate hotels. I hate—_

The door connecting their rooms opened and Eve stepped cautiously through it. She was wearing an olive-green crew neck sweater, silvery slacks and an open wool coat. Her bushy hair was pulled back to the base of her neck and gold slivers curved from her earlobes.

Villanelle pushed herself up into a sitting position, her hands propping her up, her eyes wide.

“Eve,” she said, then inhaled through her nose. Eve looked perfect. Mature, understated, elegant. Villanelle wanted to groan. Feeling hot, she pulled off her bomber jacket and let it slide off the bed onto the floor into a sagging pile.

Eve smiled with a mischievous look in her eyes and approached Villanelle, placing both of her hands on Villanelle’s knees. Villanelle suddenly smelled a familiar floral scent. She placed a hand on the back of Eve’s neck and pulled her throat closer, inhaling. Somehow, Eve was wearing _Villanelle._ Villanelle pulled back slightly, feeling wonder blossom in her throat and her heart begin to hammer in her chest. A black curtain threatened to drop over her vision and she suppressed the urge to shout something. Eve was making steady eye contact, a coy smile playing on the edges of her lips, her cheeks flushed.

Eve kissed Villanelle, and the scent flooded over them like a high-pitched ringing in their ears. Even after all the women Villanelle had kissed, Eve felt astonishingly smooth. Strange how sometimes it still felt like the first time. _Comme si nous inventions quelque chose_ , Villanelle thought giddily.

They kissed deeply, their tongues meeting between their lips, wet and gentle at first, then roughly. They bit at each others’ lips, Eve’s hands pressed more forcefully into Villanelle’s thighs, and Villanelle let out a low groan. Eve broke away and looked Villanelle with a pained half-smile on her face.

“Yes?” Eve breathed, a furrow between her eyes. Her dark curls threatened to spring out of their clasp, and Villanelle felt a fervent urge to touch them.

“Yes.”

“Yes? Yes?”

 _Oui, Oui, Oui,_ Villanelle screamed in her head, clasping the hair at the base of Eve’s neck in her fingers and gripping down. She kissed Eve again; Eve slid forward urgently so that she was standing between Villanelle’s spread legs where she perched on the edge of the bed and pressed their hips together. She lifted her small frame and sat on Villanelle’s lap, wrapping her legs around Villanelle’s waist so that she was sitting suddenly higher than Villanelle, smoothing Villanelle’s hair around the sides of her face then running her hands down the sides of her neck and down the back of her shirt, her palms hot against Villanelle’s skin.

Then came the tearing at clothes, their frantic fumbling. Eve tossed her own jacket aside; Villanelle lifted Eve’s sweater off and unclasped the back of her bra with one smooth practiced movement of her forefingers. They grappled with each other’s hair.

Villanelle ducked her head to put her mouth against Eve’s small nipples, sliding the flat of her tongue against them and rolling one between her teeth until a sound escaped Eve’s mouth. She scraped her fingertips down Eve’s bare back, ran them around to her stomach, then back up to her shoulder blades. Eve fell onto Villanelle so that they both collapsed onto the bed, Eve on top, Villanelle holding her tightly.

“God,” Eve burst out.

“I know,” Villanelle replied without thinking, not knowing what she was saying. She repeated this as they both struggled simultaneously to take Eve’s pants off; Villanelle pulling at her buttons and zipper, Eve tugging at the cloth on her thighs to pull her pants down then kicking the slacks aside with her ankles, resettling on Villanelle’s lap, pushing against her.

“I know, I know, I know,” Villanelle said stupidly as Eve grabbed her hand and put it between her legs. Villanelle pushed Eve’s underwear aside and immediately slipped two fingers into her. Why were her hands shaking? One of Eve’s palms was accidentally pinning her to the bed by the hair; she didn’t care. She grasped Eve’s ass with her free hand and pulled her closer. They both gasped at the effect, the smooth and hot slide of Villanelle’s fingers deep into Eve, Eve clenching around Villanelle’s hand.

“I know, I know, I know.” Villanelle’s body was fire; there was no distance or intrusive thoughts that she was used to. Her pulse pounded in her ears and she throbbed with every thrust of Eve’s hips.

“Don’t stop,” they both burst out at the same time, then immediately both stopped, taken aback, looked each other in the eyes and laughed with a hysterical note in their voices. Villanelle sat up, drawing Eve with her, still gripping her ass tightly in one hand, and fucked her with renewed energy. Her world narrowed to a pinpoint: the slippery texture of Eve’s pussy on her fingertips and Eve’s voice louder and louder in her ear. Villanelle slid her thumb up to Eve’s clit and thought she would come herself when Eve half-screamed.

A shudder went through Eve and her cheeks burned a deep red. She pulsed around Villanelle’s fingers and Villanelle saw the muscles in her stomach clench repeatedly.

“Breathe,” Villanelle urged. Eve let out a loud and shaking breath, then her face collapsed and suddenly it looked like she might cry.

“Eve,” Villanelle said with concern, not wanting to remove her fingers from between Eve’s legs. She took her free hand and put it on Eve’s broad cheek, brushing her thumb against her temple. A tear appeared in the corner of Eve’s eye. “Don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry, I just—” Eve bent forward until her chest was pressed against Villanelle’s and her mouth was at Villanelle’s neck. “I’m really happy.”

“You are crying because you are happy?”

Eve laughed, but the laugh felt wet on Villanelle’s throat.

“Yes. Just hold me.”

Villanelle smoothed Eve’s pinned-back hair and gently slid her fingers out of Eve to let her wet hand lie prostrate on the bed next to them. Eve’s ragged breath against her neck turned into a kiss and then a lick. They moved against each other again.

There was a loud knock at the door.

“ _Service de chambre_!” a male voice called, muffled.

Eve lifted her head and gazed at Villanelle. Villanelle grimaced guiltily.

“I ordered that like half an hour ago, okay?” she explained, batting her eyes. “Could you…?” she patted Eve gently.

“Oh. Oh, yes.” Eve rolled off of Villanelle, and Villanelle, stilled fully clothed and only slightly disheveled, got up to accept the bottle of champagne.

Closing the door behind her, she turned to see Eve lying on the bed, naked except for her underwear and socks, arranged on her side with her arm under her cheek, staring at Villanelle. Her clothes were scattered on the floor next to the bed. Villanelle loosened the cage around the cork, popped it forcefully and motioned toward Eve.

“Cheers.”


	7. Sweat

They had been in Prague for one week. Eve woke to the sound of the door to their flat groaning slightly as it was opened, then a series of soft footfalls. It was morning. Eve was becoming quite the sleeper. She and Villanelle had finally decided upon renting only one flat despite both having reservations about their need for privacy and independence. One place was cheaper, and they needed their funds to last them for at least four weeks.

The apartment, located on the second floor of an old building in a residential neighborhood southeast of the city center, had one master bedroom adjoining a narrow kitchen and an open sitting room. Through broad double doors there was a second, tiny studio: just one bed and a kitchenette with only a half-stove and an icebox. They kept their things in separate rooms but always ended up asleep together in the master bedroom, tangled in the sheets.

Once already this week Villanelle had gone out and not come back until early morning; Eve had been frantic with worry and had not slept for more than twenty minutes at a time, dreaming when she did nod off of being trapped under ice in the Vltava River, struggling and breathless. She had nearly yelled at Villanelle when she had reappeared, sneaking quietly into the flat.

“There’s nothing to be jealous of,” Villanelle had said, frowning at Eve.

“I’m not jealous!” Eve had lied vehemently, then added truthfully, “I was scared. You could have been dead for all I knew!”

Villanelle had come and wrapped her arms around Eve then, her clothes still cool and damp from the night air. She had put her cheek onto Eve’s head and said nothing for a minute as Eve’s anger cooled into relief.

“There’s a floating dock where you can watch bands play jazz all night,” Villanelle had finally said.

Now, as Eve lay in the master bed a couple of days later listening to Villanelle enter the apartment, she wondered where she had been this time. Pretending to be asleep, she watched through lidded eyes as Villanelle came through the kitchen to pass the master bedroom. She had clearly been for a run. She wore high-waisted leggings and a light pink running jacket. Her hair was pulled back into a high, tight ponytail and her face was flushed, her breath still deep. Eve stared at her ass as Villanelle moved about the room, placed her key on a side table and removed her running jacket to reveal nothing but a black sports bra underneath. The scar on her arm, now free of stitches, was beginning to turn a dark purple.

Eve closed her eyes fully as Villanelle turned to the bed. She heard her approach, then smelled her—damp, musky, sweaty. Eve felt Villanelle’s breath over her face as Villanelle leaned in and hovered over her cheek, then gave a hesitant and sweaty kiss to the corner of Eve’s eye. Eve did not stir. She wondered if Villanelle could tell she was awake.

She continued to spy on Villanelle as she removed her shoes and socks and went to the corner of the sitting room where she had set up a standing punching bag. Eve watched Villanelle’s body automatically position itself: her feet and arms slid into a guard position with her chin tucked down, her weight on the balls of her feet. She went immediately into a simple combination, jabbing the bag lightly, her shoulders and hips swiveling quickly. Soon she was increasing the complexity of the combination. Eve counted in her head as she watched: jab—cross—uppercut—jab—block—kick. Jab—cross—uppercut—jab—block—kick. The sounds of her knuckles, knees and bare feet hitting the bag became magnified as she warmed up and hit harder, breath escaping her mouth in a light puff each time she made contact.

Eve quietly swung her legs out of bed and padded into the sitting room.

“Eve!” Villanelle spun quickly. Eve jumped and screamed despite herself.

“Goddammit,” Eve said, putting her fingers to her forehead in embarrassment. Villanelle grinned, panting from her exertion. 

“You were trying to sneak up on me? That’s not a very good idea.”

“Teach me how to punch,” Eve replied. Tonight, she was finally meeting the ring runner. Joseph Menzil was an American ex-pat who supposedly traded art. They would get drinks and size each other up. Though the stakes of the meeting were low, Eve felt on edge. Villanelle surveyed her with her hands on her hips, a bead of sweat running down her red cheek to her chin.

“Okay. Like this.” Villanelle took Eve’s forearms and brought them up to a guard position, then knelt and nudged Eve’s feet so that her left was positioned slightly in front of her right, with her right foot out at an angle. Standing again, she mirrored Eve.

“When you hit, your shoulder twists, like this—” she demonstrated slowly. “Thumb goes down.”

Feeling silly, Eve tried to replicate the movement. Villanelle continued to grin. She bit her lip and her green eyes bulged with suppressed laughter.

“Okay, never mind,” Eve said with exasperation, dropping her hands.

“No!” Villanelle pushed her gently toward the practice bag, then came behind her and pressed against her back, reaching around to lift Eve’s arms up again. With her clammy hand gripping Eve’s bare forearm, Villanelle moved Eve’s arm slowly in the motion of a punch. “C’mon. Hit it.” She stepped back to watch Eve with a bright look on her face.

Eve hit the bag a few times hesitantly. Villanelle clapped her hands together brusquely.

“Come on, Eve! Hit it! Do it!”

Eve threw several sharp punches into the bag, trying to remember how she had seen Villanelle do it, her knuckles stinging. She stepped back, panting a little.

“You held back when you punched me in London,” she accused. Villanelle’s nostrils flared and the corners of her mouth turned down with amusement. 

“Of course,” she said simply. “I like your face.” She wiped sweat from the side of her jaw with her wrist and licked her lips. “I’m getting cold,” she added. “I’ll be in the bath.”

Eve dressed thoughtfully as Villanelle disappeared into the small bathroom. The phrase, _I like your face_ , skipped through her head as if on a malfunctioning record. Eve often felt a tearing in her mind between wanting to believe the things that Villanelle said and logically knowing how good Villanelle was at manipulating people. She was certain that Villanelle’s constant need to lie to her had dwindled over the years that they had known each other, but she could not push away the alarms that went off in her head several times a day. _I like your face. I like your face._

“Well,” Eve muttered to herself, sitting heavily on the couch and opening her laptop to review information for that night’s meeting. After all, Villanelle definitely did like her face. That much Eve could trust. The question was how far Villanelle’s physical attraction to Eve translated to any real underlying emotion.

Eve stared at the screen, forgetting to open any files as mental pictures of Villanelle forced other thoughts out of her head. Villanelle naked, the dazzling curve of her breasts dangling over Eve as she poured champagne onto Eve’s stomach in the hotel in Paris. They had woken sticky and reeking of wine. Villanelle’s laugh when she was surprised. Her dead, blank stare as she looked out the window sometimes. Her eager anticipation when she had brought Eve gifts, chewing on the inside of her lips with her eyebrows flicking up expectantly.

Eve wanted to groan. The very least she could do to demonstrate trust would be to get Villanelle a gift, as that was clearly something she valued. The problem was, Eve was terrible with gifts. She hated shopping, hated trying to guess what people would like, and had admitted to herself long ago that she simply had terrible taste. Her version of a gift to Niko had been picking up takeout on the way home from work. _Don’t think of him,_ she reprimanded herself, the pit of her stomach feeling cold.

An idea suddenly came to her and she swiftly closed her laptop. Stepping through the master bedroom and the kitchen toward the bathroom, she knocked lightly on the door and pushed it open.

Villanelle looked up from the bath in surprise, then grinned her annoying self-satisfied smile.

“Eve,” she said, coyly pretending to reprimand her. Her body looked like an impressionist painting, wavering under the cloudy surface of the bathwater. She was positioned with her left arm up out of the steaming water on the rim of the tub, favoring the healing wound, revealing the curve of her left breast and the top of her nipple.

“Can I take you out for lunch?” Eve asked.

They took the metro into the city center and walked through the maze of cobblestone streets, blending in with the flocks of tourists. Eve watched Villanelle’s ears seem to perk at the milieu of languages spoken all around them. Villanelle had temporarily given up her flashy suits and coats for a subtler, less obvious look. Due to the need to avoid notice and stay in character should anyone follow them, she had gotten herself a momentary wardrobe of unmemorable athleisure. She wore a long grey cotton zip-up open with a white crop top underneath, revealing a hint of her muscular abdomen. Her black joggers were fitted at the ankles, and her blonde hair was in a loose braid that fell around one shoulder and rested against her collarbones.

She still looked too elegant, too beyond the scope of normal human beauty compared to everyone around them. Eve had noticed the increase of attention that they got everywhere they went, from both men and women. She wondered what kind of glow they both gave off now. She knew that everyone saw the sparks Villanelle seemed to shed wherever she walked. She wondered what they saw when they looked at her next to this terrifying goddess.

Heads turned subtly toward them where they sat at an outdoor table adjoining Old Town Square and ate soft chunks of grilled salmon in a curry sauce. Eve’s stomach fluttered watching Villanelle’s face soften, childlike, as she gazed at the food. Food had been a good idea, after all. Villanelle seemed to crumple and lose all façade when she tasted, smelled or even looked at good food. It was a type of nakedness that seemed lurid to Eve.

“I killed a woman there,” Villanelle quipped, pointing with her fork toward the square. Buskers were scattered around the square—one played violin, one blew enormous bubbles with a loop of wire that danced through the air and bounced silently on the cobblestones before popping. A crowd was gathering in front of the Astronomical Clock—the noon hour must have been about to strike.

“The clock only chimes for forty-five seconds,” Villanelle continued, a strand of hair too short to tuck into her braid falling into the corner of her eye as she looked. “I stabbed her in the throat and no one saw. Too busy picking everyone’s pockets.” She licked the thin curried sauce from the tines of her fork. “Did you know? The carvings on the sides of the clock represent…” she paused and speared a bit of salad. “Vanity. Greed. Death.” She chewed the salad. “Pagan Invasion,” she concluded.

Eve chuckled.

“Those could be the subtitle to my biography,” she joked. Villanelle, her mouth full, guffawed and nodded.

“Mine, too. It was perfect.” She leaned back and put her utensils aside, casting her eyes around the square. Suddenly her eyes widened.

“ _Zmrzlina!”_ she half-whispered to herself. Eve turned to see who she was looking at, stiffening.

“Who is jrm…zl…?” Eve gave up on the foreign word.

“Ice cream,” Villanelle clarified, her eyes locked on a hanging sign over a shop that boasted, ‘ _Traditional Trdnelník’._ It depicted an enormous soft swirl of vanilla wrapped in what looked like a cone of fried dough.

Eve bought one for Villanelle the moment they had finished lunch and paid (“ _Úcet, prosím”)_ and they trotted happily, content, down one of the narrow side alleys from the square as Villanelle gave more attention to the ice cream than Eve had ever seen her give to anything besides Eve herself.

“This is terrible,” Villanelle said with delight after chewing off a cinnamon-coated edge of the doughy cone. She took another huge bite of the ice cream.

A large group of boisterous young men passed them going down the alley, wearing matching t-shirts emblazoned with a slogan that Eve could only guess was in Slovakian. Though the pubs at only been open for little over an hour, they seemed extremely drunk. One tripped on a cobblestone and was caught by his friend; they all laughed too loudly and slapped each other on the backs, taking up nearly the entire narrow street. One, tall and thin with a smooth face, caught sight of Villanelle and stepped into her path.

“ _Dobry den. Jak se jmenujete?”_

Villanelle looked up from her ice cream in surprise and rolled her eyes.

“No,” she replied in English, making to step around him. He parried, blocking her path and reaching out for her hips.

“English? You want fun? I am fun.”

Villanelle stilled and narrowed her eyes, momentarily lowering her ice cream. Eve, suddenly filled with anger, heard a roaring in her ears and felt an explosion in her chest.

“You want fun?” Villanelle mocked, lowering her voice and imitating the man’s accent.

Eve stepped forward swiftly, clenched her fist and punched the man directly in the nose. He dropped to his knees and clapped his hands over his face in shock. When he drew them away, a spurt of blood fell from his nostrils down his top lip and onto the grey cobblestones. Eve resisted the urge to kick him.

“She’s fucked more women than you have,” Eve hissed, and stalked away.


	8. Leather

The cocktail bar was a beautifully detailed jazz era replica—studded leather sofas and benches complemented dark wood paneling. Soft lighting cast a glow over gilded frames and glass liquor cabinets. It was crowded; Joseph Menzil had made the reservations for tonight’s meeting, and Villanelle had only managed to get a table in the corner of the room by charming an invitation out of group of young businessmen, then staying when they left, leaving them disappointed.

Villanelle was backup; everyone had agreed. She would watch the meeting from a distance in the event that anything unexpected happened. Eve should not so much as glance in Villanelle’s direction. They wanted her to stay as anonymous as possible. To Menzil, she would be an unknown. Unimportant. He would know her only as a Muay Thai boxer, inexperienced and untried. Whether she lost spectacularly or won spectacularly was irrelevant. She was a red herring.

Villanelle gazed at Eve where she sat alone at a small round table against the wall, waiting for Menzil to arrive. Eve looked uncharacteristically graceful sipping a cocktail in the tight silver dress that Villanelle had bought her in Paris. Her hair was down, magnificently voluminous, making Eve look both regal and intriguing at even the slightest turn of her head. Villanelle smiled to herself, thinking of the contrast between this and the Eve that sat on the floor in front her laptop in sweatpants, drinking Pilsner Urquell from a tall can.

She felt a similar dark thrill to the high she used to ride when she had first started to stalk Eve years ago. Then, she had felt an electric longing to touch Eve constantly. In the absence of touching, her nipples would harden even watching Eve touch something that Villanelle had planted for her—a piece of clothing, a slip of paper. When Eve touched her own hair, Villanelle had felt like it was for her and her alone, and these feelings had flourished into unceasing fantasies.

She had never been so distracted from work. She had wanted to fuck everyone that she came into contact with. She had masturbated constantly, at times that surprised even her. The desire for Eve had become so overpowering and Villanelle’s grip on their real and imagined interactions so tenuous that it had been quite easy, really, for Eve to stab Villanelle when she did.

This was different, but Villanelle felt electrified by it in a new way. She still could not have Eve whenever she wanted her. Eve would disappear for long hours at a time into the files on her computer, sorting endlessly through the lurid photographs of murdered men (when Villanelle looked over her shoulder at these photos, she saw nothing. She wondered what Eve saw). At times like tonight, and when traveling, they pretended not to know each other. Then their scents, nearby, would tease the other endlessly, seeming to beg the distance to close even as they both refused it.

Today, after Eve had hit the man in the street, they had rushed down Melantrichova hand-in-hand, taken the tram back to their place in Vrsovice and immediately fallen to the floor onto each other.

In the bar, Villanelle took a sip of her gin and almost let her eyes flutter closed, remembering the afternoon. The way Eve had sat on her face with one hand propped against an armchair, the other hand reaching improbably behind to land between Villanelle’s legs. How they had both strained to make it work despite their height difference, then moaning with frustration, collapsed into a different shaped pile—all the while seeking, pushing.

Villanelle’s reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Joseph Menzil. Eve rose as he approached the table and politely took her hand. He was a short, slim man in his late fifties with thick silver hair, understated in a green wool sweater and dark, fitted jeans. He wore a slim gold chain around his neck and several rings, though not a wedding band. Villanelle instantly knew that he was gay, and her interest piqued.

To her, gay men were the most untrustworthy. Already unaccustomed to the same guaranteed benefits in life as others, they tended to be more suspicious, and Villanelle could not seduce them. Perhaps, she thought, already thinking ahead, she could hire a male prostitute to fuck him and feed Villanelle information. Just in case Menzil was hiding something important.

Villanelle had momentarily forgotten that she did not have the money to hire anyone for anything.

Though their conversation was heavily masked by the ambient noise of the lounge, Eve and Joseph Menzil could be faintly heard exchanging pleasantries. When Menzil asked about the neighborhood she was staying in, Eve lied and said that they were in Vinohrady. So, she did not trust Menzil either. It was a good lie, too. Vinohrady had a gay district and was an affluent neighborhood in the same general area as their actual apartment. Villanelle felt her chest swell with pride.

The server approached Eve’s table and questioned them; Villanelle saw Menzil’s lips move to order them a round of drinks. Villanelle herself had to be careful not to get drunk. The staff would never let her keep the table if she started ordering mineral water. She made a mental note to get rid of a few drinks somewhere.

Casting her eyes around the bar, she catalogued what she knew. The four women at the table closest to Eve’s were Catalonian, the smooth lilt of their language easily identifiable. Their clothes were inexpensive and they all wore wedding rings, though they were easily distracted by each young man that walked by, so clearly their husbands had not accompanied them on this vacation. The two gaunt white-haired men on Eve’s other side were drinking whisky and quickly becoming untenably drunk, wheezing with laughter and slowly sinking into their chairs despite the relatively early hour of the evening.

The music was quiet jazz. The bar stocked more bottles of rum than any other variety of alcohol. The bartenders were using vintage bar tools and wearing vests. A haze of cigar smoke clung near the ceiling.

Villanelle tried to lipread the quiet, earnest conversation between Eve and Menzil but found it especially difficult when she could not look them full in the face. Eve’s expression was falsely friendly, her eyes wide. Menzil’s, as they settled in, was concerned. He fiddled with his rings absently. He was not well.

The large group of Spanish women gathered their things and left, taking their noise with them so that in the vacuum left by their conversation Villanelle could hear more snatches of the exchange she wanted to know. Eve would fill her in on everything later, but Villanelle could not suppress her curiosity.

“—a list of their names,” Eve was saying. “Anything you can give me, we’ll run it.”

“…cameras? No, these people wouldn’t like…would they? Otherwise they would be…” came Menzil, later.

“…assurance that my fighter won’t be in danger.”

Villanelle perked up at this last fragment from Eve. _My fighter. My. My. Mine._ She felt a humming in her stomach.

“Only males have been killed,” Menzil responded, his voice almost too clear in the narrow, low-ceilinged room. He lowered it again and Villanelle lost the thread of their conversation momentarily. Her eyes had just lit on a man sitting at the bar in the farthest corner of the room. A swift and keen intuition told her that he was doing exactly the same thing that Villanelle was doing.

He was in his mid-thirties, a brunette with handsome features wearing casual street clothes. He smoked a cigar (inexpertly, Villanelle noticed), was drinking a dark liquid from a highball glass, and his eyes flickered to Eve’s table about once per minute. Even his body was turned imperceptibly toward the pair the way he was positioned on the barstool.

Villanelle considered whether he was simply checking out Eve. Or Menzil, for that matter. She hadn’t gotten this far alive by ignoring her intuition, though. She memorized his features, the roguish cowlick at the top of his forehead that gave volume to his hair. An attractive but lopsided twist to his mouth. She drummed her fingers lightly on the tabletop in front of her and considered seducing him.

Sex, she had learned at a very early age, was the fastest way to get what she wanted. Control. Information. She was already wet from thinking about all the sex she’d been having with Eve that afternoon. Still, she reminded herself, she was here to keep an eye on Eve. She would not move.

“You trade art?” Eve could be heard asking.

“I do. Mostly paintings.”

“Does anyone at your other ‘business’?”

“The majority, I’d say. Many find that it’s a great place to make a deal.”

“A deal that doesn’t involve taxes, I assume.”

Menzil inclined his head slightly.

“I won a rather interesting piece from a match just the other day.”

“Why fighting, though? Why not just…” Eve gestured at their drinks and the bar around them.

“It’s an art of its own.”

“A violent sort of art.”

“Art is violent. I see a lot of violence in art, don’t you?”

Eve remained silent and Menzil continued.

“Have you ever seen a piece of Jacob wrestling with the angel? A painting? An etching? Leloir, perhaps? Doré? They are caught, frozen in this moment—struggling eternally. Their arms and hands and hips are locked together. In one we might think that Jacob’s knees are about to buckle. In another he seems to have the angel off-balance—” Menzil’s voice was rising again in a fervor “—but at my business: the art moves. The knees buckle. The muscles have sound and sweat and blood. And eventually it is over.”

“You can’t collect it.”

“Ephemeral. Like a sunset. Why do we enjoy watching a sunset so much more than looking at a photo of one? You can hardly grasp at it before it is gone. Then the melancholy grips at you. You have to return to experience it again, and it is never exactly the same twice.”

Villanelle was deeply bored by this conversation, and passed the next hour impatiently. She rid herself of her next drink by bumping into a drunk middle-aged man and making him think he had spilled it all. When he bought her another one, she left the glass next to a toilet in the women’s restroom as if forgotten, then ordered a Prosecco from the bar.

Eve and Menzil finally stood again, clasping hands earnestly in parting. Villanelle sat up straight, arching her back and removing her hair from its clasp, then running her fingers through it. This was the signal she and Eve had agreed upon—yes, she saw that Eve was leaving. Yes, she was paying attention. Yes, she would meet her at their flat later on. _Yes, yes, yes—_ Villanelle thought of their favorite word to say to each other as they fucked. _Yes,_ Villanelle would say when Eve ran her tongue up the back of Villanelle’s thigh and ass. _Yes,_ Eve would say when Villanelle held her to the bed by her hair and fucked her from behind.

Eve left first, then Menzil. Finally, the dark-haired man at the bar drained his drink, stubbed out his final cigar, paid and left. Villanelle followed him.

Outside, the temperature had dropped dramatically and a cold grey wind was blowing down the streets from the dizzying heights of the spired buildings. The wind carried thin smatterings of cold rain. Villanelle wondered if it would turn into snow overnight. The season was getting late. Despite this, throngs of tourists flocked the confusing maze of streets and Villanelle, who was not intimately familiar with Prague and had not had her usual several weeks of study before an assignment, was morbidly cautious to note where she was walking.

If the man had training on shaking a tail, he was ignoring it. He did not look behind him or take a circuitous route. Perhaps he had no reason to believe that he would be followed, but he was forgetting a very important rule of surveillance: you are most easily watched while you are distracted watching. It was easy for Villanelle to disguise herself in the crowds. He made straight for the river and crossed Charles Bridge. The statues loomed grotesquely over the bridge, the saints and angels looking like deformed monsters in the muted darkness. On the other side, the man paused and seemed to look up toward the lights of Prague Castle on the hill. Villanelle followed his gaze. The pinnacles, sprawling courtyards and buildings of mortared brick cast an impressive bright glow on the surrounding hillside. She knew that the complex dated back to the 9th Century, but architecture did not interest Villanelle. This man did.

At that moment, a skinny young woman bumped into Villanelle.

“ _Prominte,”_ the woman muttered, making to move by, but Villanelle felt the woman try to pick her pocket. Villanelle’s hand flashed out and grasped the woman by a bony wrist. Her switchblade was pressed against the woman’s navel in an instant, hidden from view by the tangling of their coats.

“ _Ano,”_ Villanelle whispered. “ _Bezte pryc!”_ She released her grip, and the woman disappeared immediately.

So, Villanelle found when she cast her eyes around for the man she had been following, had her target.


	9. The Coin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: brief mention of self-harm.

“I want you to run all of their names,” Eve said to Jamie into the phone. She was skirting the edges of Letna Park, the gardens providing a southerly panorama of the city, walking without purpose, smoking a cigarette. Her cold breath and the smoke mixed into an indecipherable stream of grey fog in the air as she continued. “I want any news involving them from the past ten years. Any affair, any bankruptcies, any big deals. I need to know if any of these so-called agents or their players have any dirt. I also want a list of anyone connected to them who has died over the past year. Fuck it—five years.”

She could hear Jamie typing furiously in the background. She had been put on speaker phone.

“How long will that take?” she asked. “To start?”

Bear’s low voice responded.

“Better part of a day. At least. Depends on how much comes up. We’ll have somethin’ for you by tomorrow.”

“Fine. That’s fine.” Eve’s arms felt weak from the tobacco, which she hadn’t smoked in over a week. She rolled her neck and flexed her fingers. She arrived at a railing on the edge of the park and paused to take in the view.

The red-tiled roofs of the city spread out dizzyingly beneath her, capped with domes and spires of an oxidized green. In the damp grey light of late morning, the river was murky and reflected dark shadows from the low bridges that spanned its length. The trees that still retained any leaves were a dark ochre, and limp. A flock of pigeons burst from a tower and took to the air in a coordinated swoop, twisting and then fading into dark specks as they winged away.

“And how are you doing?” Jamie asked, his voice gruff and crackling over the speaker of her cheap burner phone. Eve leaned against the railing.

“I’m…good,” she admitted truthfully. She glanced behind her at the beer gardens, the ragged group of skaters trying to grind a rail in the courtyard, the couples holding hands as they walked the paths. There was a large white tent, scaffolding and a sound system being set up for some holiday music event. “I actually kind of like it here. It’s a little like London but everyone’s not so rude.”

“What about Villanelle?” Jamie followed. Eve hadn’t given Bitter Pill any information about where they were staying or their interactions with each other besides what was necessary for the job.

Eve paused, thinking.

“I honestly don’t know how she is.”

“What he means is, is she stayin’ in line,” Bear called, sounding farther away from the phone. “Been murderin’ anyone. Stabbin’s, you know.”

“Oh. No, nothing like that.”

Eve wasn’t sure how to explain to them that she felt safer now, here, with Villanelle, than she had ever felt when they were apart. It was like a chronic, nagging and overwhelming pain had finally gone from her body. She was more worried, she admitted to herself, about Villanelle than anything else.

Neither she nor Villanelle were even remotely competent at talking about their feelings. Eve’s logic-driven brain had always felt intense discomfort when other people got emotional, so she would find ways to redirect or avoid those conversations. She had always dismissed people’s concerns about her own state of mind. During recovery from her gunshot wound she had been urged by several professionals and family members to seek intensive counseling, but she had not even considered it. Where would she start with that? The majority of what had happened to her and what she had done was highly classified at any rate—even if she could think of how to put any of it into words.

Villanelle, similarly, had always dodged discussion about her state of mind. Eve was fairly sure that Villanelle didn’t have the same range of emotions as other people. Sometimes she seemed antsy or bored, sometimes jovial and warm, and she certainly showed plenty of interest in sex and food. But, beyond that? Her thoughts were impenetrable.

Once, Eve had come back to the apartment with an armful of groceries. Glancing around and not seeing Villanelle, she gone about placing the bread, olives, eggs and jam where they belonged until she noticed that Villanelle’s key was sitting on the side table where she always kept it. She had found Villanelle in the adjoining studio, seated on the floor with her arms around her knees, leaning against the bed and staring blankly at the wall. Eve did not disturb her.

She had felt a chill down her back as she continued storing the groceries, thinking of how much time she had spent doing the exact same thing in the past year: emptied of everything and everyone that mattered to her, trying to fill the space with beer and cigarettes, sitting on the dirty floor next to her bed.

Looking out at the city from the steep hillside, Eve wondered if she herself was a psychopath. A morbid urge to burn herself with the stub of the cigarette crept into her fingertips. She shivered and threw the butt away from herself.

Two years ago, the psychologist had told her that to understand a psychopath, you needed to strip away everything that made them human. Empty them out. That’s what you had: a shell of a person. The question was, if that was supposed to be Villanelle to start with, then who did Eve have now? Something must have happened to Villanelle, because she was not the same person Eve had first met.

“I have to go,” she said to Jamie and Bear, hanging up. She put the phone and her hands into her pockets and began to descend the stone staircase that led back down to street level. Two days earlier she had been drinking a beer, dangling over the same railing, watching Villanelle train by running up and down these same stairs. She had felt the warmth of pride like fire in her blood as she watched Villanelle’s beautiful frame take the stairs two at a time. Eve liked seeing strangers turn to look at Villanelle as she ran.

Eve was the luckiest and most cursed woman on earth. Her life was a double-edged sword. A flipping coin with a demon and an angel on either side. She crossed the closest footbridge over the Vltava and headed for the tram.

Eve opened the creaky door to their apartment to be hit in the nostrils with the scent of yeast, garlic and rosemary. Villanelle stood at the counter with her hands wrist-deep in a ceramic bowl. Her blonde hair was tucked meticulously into a French braid, and she wore a sheer white cotton t-shirt that clearly advertised the fact that Villanelle was not wearing a bra.

“Eve!” Villanelle exclaimed, holding her hands up into the air. They were covered in a sticky dough and streaks of flour. White flour was also cast about the countertop, the waistband of Villanelle’s pants and even the floor. Eve loved how Villanelle said her name. Each time, the inflection was different. She knew that it was mostly manipulation, a copy of something Villanelle had heard someone else say: disappointment, pride, excitement. She didn’t care. She liked the hum of Villanelle’s teeth bouncing off of her lip with every ‘v’.

“What’s going on?” Eve asked cautiously, smiling.

“I’m making bread.” Villanelle tried to scrape the sticky dough and crusted flour from her hands into the bowl, and Eve resisted the urge to laugh at her. She took her coat off and hung it on a hook by the front door, then came over next to Villanelle to look into the bowl.

“Huh.”

“What?” Villanelle asked self-consciously.

“Have you ever made bread before?”

“Pfft.” Villanelle continued trying to scoop the mess in front of her into a cohesive ball. “I looked up the recipe on your laptop.”

“My laptop? How did you get the password?”

Villanelle frowned and looked at Eve with barely concealed amusement, as if it should be obvious.

“You type it every day. I have a photographic memory.”

Eve knew this should have been obvious to her. Of course Villanelle could glance at her finger strokes on the keyboard and immediately memorize her passcode. She was an internationally renowned assassin. Eve thought of the two-sided coin of her life again. It applied to Villanelle, too—child and monster. Innocent and guilty. Expert, and somehow…completely incompetent.

“Can I help?” Eve asked gently. Eve was good with dough. She had grown up making dumplings and breads. She had been married to a Polish man for twelve years.

“Where did you learn this?” Villanelle asked as she stood back, holding her sticky hands out as if they were covered in blood, watching Eve test and adjust the dough.

“I can make lots of things,” Eve replied absently. “Bread, dumplings, _piroshki_.” Eve looked up after a moment when Villanelle did not respond. Villanelle’s gaze was fixed and intense. Eve had come to understand over the past two weeks that this meant Villanelle was not at all mentally present in the moment. Her hands were still held out in front of her, the dough and dry flour beginning to form a crust on her elegant fingers.

“Villanelle?”

“Will you make me _piroshki_ sometime?” Villanelle asked in a strained voice. Eve turned, leaned the small of her back against the countertop, and looked Villanelle in the face. Villanelle looked thin and tired, her hazel eyes bright and glassy.

“Okay.” Eve wiped her hands on a dish towel and put them on Villanelle’s waist. She leaned forward until her nose was pressed against Villanelle’s collarbone and inhaled. Maybe the smell was sage. Maybe it was cedar.

Villanelle responded by pressing her hipbones into Eve’s. She wrapped her forearms around Eve’s neck, keeping her messy hands clear of the masses of hair, and put her mouth against the crown of Eve’s head.

Eve relaxed into the gentle embrace. She felt Villanelle’s soft breath against her head and smelled her earthy, intoxicating scent. Villanelle’s bare breasts were pushed up against Eve’s blouse; she could feel the nipples under the thin cotton. Suddenly, she was turned on.

“Mm,” Eve hummed, leaning into Villanelle’s body and pushing her hands up the back of her shirt. She felt the incredible ridge of Villanelle’s back muscles tense as Eve’s fingers stroked the length of her spine. 

“Eve—” Villanelle murmured her name “—do you want to have sex?”

“Not with those hands,” Eve replied dryly. Villanelle scoffed, resting her elbows on Eve’s shoulders while still holding her hands away from Eve’s hair.

“I don’t need my hands.” Villanelle slowly brushed her cheek down the side of Eve’s face and along Eve’s jaw. She gently scraped her teeth against Eve’s neck, then the soft spot underneath Eve’s left ear. Her warm tongue slid up the back of Eve’s earlobe. Eve couldn’t help a high-pitched yelp bursting from her throat. She swallowed, embarrassed. Her ears were her most sensitive spot.

“I could lick you all over,” Villanelle started in a low murmur. “I could take off all your clothes with my teeth. I could—”

Eve could tell that Villanelle was not being herself, copying something she had heard someone else say. In bed, in a porn, on TV, in a movie—she didn’t really care.

“Uh-huh,” Eve said patronizingly. She jumped onto the counter and pulled Villanelle closer with her legs, then stripped off the sheer white shirt with one motion. She ran her hands over Villanelle’s bare skin: her arms, ridged with muscle from the past two weeks of training; her breasts, her stomach. Villanelle’s cheeks burned red and her breath quickened, becoming louder. She reached for Eve, but Eve gripped her wrists firmly and held the doughy hands away from her body, placing them on the countertop on either side of her.

She undid the button of Villanelle’s jeans.

“May I?” Eve asked in a low voice, looking her in the eyes. Villanelle nodded, her eyes focused on Eve, her French braid resting against her collarbone. Eve slipped her hand into Villanelle’s pants and softly kicked her heel into the back of Villanelle’s knees so that she buckled slightly toward Eve with a surprised gasp. _Sorry, Baby_ , Eve thought with a grin, placing her other hand on the back of Villanelle’s neck and her mouth to Villanelle’s temple.

It was easy, after two weeks. It was almost just like when Eve touched herself. Villanelle was so wet, and so soft. The softness never ceased to amaze Eve, bathed her in heat like a warm bath, sat on her chest like a weight. Everything had been so easy to give into, after all: every part of it. Sometimes their sex was frantic and sharp. Sometimes it was small and soft, like this—an orgasm in the kitchen with a wisp of Villanelle’s hair stuck to the corner of Eve’s mouth.

They both sat on the countertop afterwards, eating plums thoughtfully. Villanelle was still topless and her pants still unbuttoned. She sat with one leg tucked under her, the other dangling toward the floor. Eve finished a plum and looked into the ceramic bowl that had sat forgotten next to them.

“That bread is fucked.”

“…no.”

“It’s fucked, Villanelle.”

Villanelle’s face grew more serious.

“I’m going to get my ass kicked, Eve.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have a sparring partner. There’s only so much I can practice.”

“Maybe someone will pull a knife after all and then you can just kill them.”

“That would be nice.”

“Let’s go watch a fight,” Eve suggested. “We can at least get an idea of what we’re dealing with.”

“Sure,” Villanelle drawled, suddenly in an Irish brogue, “But wot about the wee art trader?”

“He—” Eve laughed despite herself “—he already told me we should come by—I’m sorry, are you planning on being Irish?”

“I rather fancy it, aye.”

“I told him your name was Irina Vasiliev.”

Villanelle pulled a horrified grimace and reverted back to her Russian accent.

“Why!”

“I don’t know! it was the first thing that came into my head,” Eve replied guiltily. Villanelle groaned and thumped the back of her head against a cupboard, her chin pointing up.

“Fine,” she grumbled, “But I’m not speaking Russian.”


	10. Brick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a heads up, today's and tomorrow's chapter have no shmut whatsoever in them. Almost completely plot. I hope y'all will forgive me because I have to say that I REALLY enjoyed writing these chapters. I promise I will let you eat your little Villaneve hearts out for Chapter Twelve.

It was a cellar like any other in Prague: a subterranean hall with curved ceilings and alcoves of crumbling brick. The floor was cement, and there was the damp smell of mildew in the air. Villanelle and Eve followed the bouncer down a series of winding hallways until they were let into the main expanse of the cellar. About fifty people lined the edges of the hall, some standing but most seated in wooden chairs, talking and laughing loudly. Nearly all were men. Villanelle eyed the dozen or so women uneasily. Everyone was dressed down, as Eve and Villanelle had also been asked to do, except for two wiry half-naked men in gym shorts who were shaking out their arms on the periphery of a square that had been laid out in white tape on the bare floor.

“Jesus wept,” Villanelle whispered, returning to her Irish brogue. She had decided to stick with it just to annoy Eve and remind her that she wasn’t Villanelle’s handler. Villanelle was still pissed that Eve had put her name down as Irina Vasiliev. _Konstantin would be so proud,_ Villanelle thought with a sneer.

“Seriously?” Eve glared at Villanelle. She was in her dark wool coat and a navy sweater, her hair pulled back and wearing the gold earrings that Villanelle had bought her in Paris. Menzil was strolling toward them, so Villanelle did not reply. He grasped Eve’s hand, murmuring a welcome, then did the same to Villanelle, looking her over.

“Irina, is it?” he asked. “Absolutely stunning.”

Villanelle smirked.

“Yer too kind.”

Menzil’s eyebrows raised.

“Irish?”

“Me mammy was from Belfast.”

“And your father was Russian.”

“Russian military.”

“Ha. Small wonder you know how to fight. Come, I have seats for us.” He motioned for them to follow and they edged their way through the crowd. The volume in the room increased as the two fighters in the ring squared up across a line from each other, raising their bare fists to protect their faces. Villanelle saw cash exchange several hands. There was a man scribbling furiously in a notebook near one corner. The fighters met without fanfare or pause, the faint smack of their skin echoing in the hall as they threw a flurry of inquisitive punches at each other.

“What should I know?” Villanelle asked Menzil they lowered themselves into surprisingly comfortable wooden chairs in a back row.

“No biting, no headbutting, no elbows, no locks if you’re boxing. Kicks are on for Muay Thai. No bell. The referee stops the match when there’s a knockout or if the person can’t defend themselves anymore. Or if you get pushed across the line.”

“This isn’t the same place as the photos,” Eve commented. Menzil narrowed his eyes.

“Well, you understand why we had to move locations. Several times. It used to be a bar. Do you like it? Boris, this is Irina Vasiliev,” he said, leaning slightly to introduce the man seated on Villanelle’s other side. He was in his sixties with wispy white hair, tall and pudgy and wearing a long white knit sweater to match his hair. Villanelle resisted the desire to comment on his cologne choice. Paco Rabanne One Million. A classic. Not something that Irina would know.

“It’s a pleasure,” said Villanelle, shaking his hand. “Me da’s name was Boris.” She did not need to look to know that Eve would be rolling her eyes.

“I’ve invited her to fight,” Menzil added, leaning back in his seat again as the audience roared at something that had happened in the ring.

“ _Hände hoch! Hände hoch!”_ Someone was yelling as one of the fighters stumbled backward, his hand clapped over his eye.

“You have fought before?” Boris asked her, his eyes on the match. He had a thick Czech accent, but his English was clear. “What is your style?”

“I haven’t fought since I was young. I trained in Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu and Systema Spetsnaz,” Villanelle answered honestly. She did not mention that she was also trained in ballistics, anatomy, linguistics, and her favorite: toxicology. Poison. Boris laughed.

“Systema? You are joking.” He turned toward Menzil. “She is no, uh, how is it called—Girl Scout.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Menzil replied.

Villanelle gritted her teeth. She imagined pounding Menzil’s delicate face until it was unrecognizable. _I could leave him dead in his own ring,_ she thought. She pictured arranging him in a Girl Scout uniform with badges plastered over his eyes, and she finally smiled.

“You remind me of a painting,” Boris said, kindly.

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Who does she remind you of, Joseph?” Boris called out. Menzil, who was watching the match with his elbows on his knees, glanced over again.

“Hmf. Albert Lynch.”

“Yes! Yes, I think so too.”

At that moment the match ended as one fighter’s fist connected soundly with the other’s stomach followed by a swift and loud uppercut to the jaw. Villanelle heard Eve, seated on Menzil’s other side, hiss in sympathy over the shouts of the crowd.

“That’ll be me face soon,” Villanelle quipped to her.

“I’ve seen you take worse,” Eve replied crossly.

“Remind me how you know each other?” Menzil asked.

“Narcotics Anonymous,” Villanelle replied before Eve could open her mouth. Eve turned at that and gave Villanelle a withering stare, and Villanelle smiled sweetly back.

The winner of the match was receiving congratulations and slaps on the back; money was exchanging hands, and a small group was gathered around the man on the floor. His legs were kicking across the cement, his hands clasped over his face.

“I think his jaw is broken,” Boris commented gruffly.

“Did ye bet?” Villanelle asked. Boris shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“Not today.”

“Will he get paid?” she pressed. He looked at her in surprise with bright blue eyes.

“Of course. They did not tell you? Everyone is paid. You lose, you get maybe $500.”

“Ye pay in U.S. dollars?”

“Easy to exchange here.”

“What if I win?”

Boris examined her as the next fighters approached the ring. These two were huge, muscular. One had a belly; the other a beard. Both wore nondescript t-shirts and were barefoot.

“Depends on the bets. I saw one man win fifty-thousand last week.”

Villanelle was intrigued. Fifty-thousand dollars for one fight? Two seats over, Eve was quietly grilling Menzil.

“What currency?” Eve asked.

“Anything,” Menzil was replying.

“Where do you find the fighters?”

“They have to be invited by one of my agents. Word of mouth, only.”

“Has there ever been counterfeit passed around?”

“Mm. Of course.”

“Is there conflict between any of the agents?”

“Plenty.”

“Who is sleeping with whom?”

At this, Menzil turned to look at Eve, but did not respond.

Later, they all exited in groups. Villanelle and Eve pressed shoulders together as they walked down the circuitous hallways toward the outer door.

“They’re all fucking,” Eve said under her breath to Villanelle.

“I know. Did you see those fighters?” She dropped the Irish accent to speak to Eve.

“Angelic,” Eve responded. “The eyelashes on that wrestler?”

“Savages,” Villanelle commented. “There wasn’t even popcorn.”

Outside, they spotted Boris in a group of men who were leaning against the wall of the building, smoking cigarettes and marijuana. He separated himself from the group and approached them, a half-smoked joint dangling from his fingers.

“Join us for a drink?” he asked.

Villanelle and Eve exchanged glances and came to a silent agreement, then nodded.

They went to another cellar nearby and sat in a secluded alcove. It was three strange men, Boris, Villanelle and Eve. When they sat, Boris spread beer mats around the table. The server appeared and Boris held up five fingers.

“ _Pivo,”_ he instructed.

They were quickly brought a round of pilsners.

_“Na zdraví!”_ everyone chorused, tapping the bottom of their glasses onto the table before drinking.

“What do you have for us tonight, Hans?” Boris asked as the eldest of them stood, holding his beer up with one bony hand as if to give another toast. Everyone seemed to settle back into their seats expectantly. Eve and Villanelle glanced at each other and then away with a slight shrug.

“Tonight I thought of Richard Siken,” the old man said. There was a quiet murmur at the table, and some chuckles. Villanelle felt that she was witnessing a strange ritual. She did not understand close friend groups, and families—the unspoken familiarity with which they circled each other in day-to-day moments.

“Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this—

Swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood

On the first four knuckles

We pull our boots on with both hands

But we can’t punch ourselves awake and all I can do

Is stand on the curb and say, _Sorry_

_About the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine”_

The men laughed then and drank again as he gave a tiny bow and reseated himself.

“That was a good one, Hans,” someone said.

Villanelle frowned. She spoke six languages fluently, but poetry was impenetrable to her. _What is it with these art guys?_ She thought to herself. _First they are comparing me to a painting…_ she glanced again at Eve, but Eve looked thoughtful. Her forefinger circled the rim of her pint glass almost sensually.

The conversation immediately turned to a recap of the events of the night. Names were thrown around the table that meant nothing to Villanelle. American music played from a jukebox between their table and the bar.

“I am pleased to see you,” the man next to Villanelle told her. He was a thin man in his forties with a scraggly reddish beard. Villanelle swallowed a mouthful of beer, though it was one of her least favorite drinks. At least it was cold and smooth, refreshing after the warm and sweaty atmosphere of the fights.

“Are ye?” she replied to the man.

“Women are not so common to fight.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Will you win?”

Villanelle frowned, shrugging and taking another sip of beer. She hadn’t eaten in hours, and an immediate buzz began to brew in her belly.

“Hard to say, isn’t it?” No. Probably not. There hadn’t even been a women’s match that night for her to size up.

A familiar piano riff suddenly met her ears. She felt her stomach turn and her throat contract. _No, no,_ she thought, her head jerking around. The song was so fast, so unforgiving: it plunged forward before she could react. She stood quickly, her chair sliding out from the table with an audible scrape. Everyone looked up in surprise.

\-- _Well Crocodile Rocking is something shocking_

_When your feet just can’t keep still_

_I never knew me a better time and I guess I never will--_

Villanelle strode swiftly to the jukebox where a young man with a collared shirt and a short-clipped beard was leaning, flipping through the albums and taking occasional sips from the pint of beer that sat on the top of the glass-fronted case.

“Turn it off,” she said quietly, forgetting her Irish accent.

“Excuse me?” He was American.

“Turn that shit off.”

\-- _La, La la la la laaaaa, la la la la laaaa—_

Incredulously, he looked her up and down.

“Fuck off.”

The buzz in Villanelle’s stomach and the scream waiting to explode in her throat intensified. She slammed her fist down on his unsuspecting hand where it rested in the jukebox, then grabbed his fingers and thrust his wrist back until she heard it break. He screeched, and she grabbed his pint of beer and broke it against the side of his head. Glass and beer sprayed against the jukebox, his face, and her own. He stumbled sideways, one knee buckling and hitting the floor.

She slapped the ‘next’ button on the jukebox, breathing heavily. Someone was shouting something. Her head was spinning; she gasped for air. She spun on one foot and made to leave the bar.

\-- _Holding hands and skimming stones_

_Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own_

_But the biggest kick I ever got_

_Was doing a thing called the Crocodile Rock—_

“I’m betting on her,” she heard someone at their table say as she found the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poem credit goes to Richard Siken. The title is Little Beast. Credit also goes to my tumblr homie whose AO3 handle I do not know whose blog inspired this chapter. 
> 
> Oh, and duh, Elton John wrote the song.


	11. Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I love y'all.  
> And - because I love y'all - I acknowledge that this chapter is completely exposition and barely moves forward the romance or the plot at all.  
> Yet - because I love y'all - I also will not patronize you by assuming that you can't manage to understand why I needed to write this chapter as a bridge into the finale of this fic.  
> Finally - because I love y'all - I decided to post two chapters today because I know that Chapter Twelve will...make up for this. Your patience. 
> 
> Peace.

Eve burst out the front door of the beer cellar, Villanelle’s coat in one hand and her own thrown over her elbow. The frosty night air slapped her in the face and stung at her nostrils.

“Shit,” she said, looking around and struggling to put her coat on while holding Villanelle’s. Plumes of white breath streamed from her nose. She hadn’t even gotten to finish one beer. She spotted Villanelle’s figure disappearing down the empty street and jogged after her, grateful to be in flats. She opened her mouth to call out, but thought better of it. Villanelle’s name should not be yelled on a quiet street. Eve growled under her breath as she closed the gap between them, angry. Villanelle must know that she was there, but she did not adjust her pace even as Eve drew level with her.

“What the hell was that?” Eve asked, panting a little. Villanelle pressed her lips together and raised her eyebrows slightly, but did not respond or glance Eve’s way, even when Eve held out the coat to her. Their footsteps were loud in the cold night air.

“What happened?” Eve pressed. “Could you stop?”

“Why do you always have to ask so many questions?” Villanelle finally hissed, halting abruptly and whirling to face Eve.

“We are trying to keep a low profile,” Eve responded, frustration boiling up. “If anyone finds out you’re here, we’re _both_ fucked!”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you just made a huge public scene.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“That’s not the point! They’re probably calling the police right now. That man is going to give them a description of you. And what if they have cameras in that bar?”

“The Twelve has better things to do than watch bar fights.”

“As if it would be so hard to flag any police report involving assault by a hot blonde woman,” Eve retorted. Villanelle stared at her, breathing through her nose. Her eyes were still a little unfocused and wild. She bit absently at her bottom lip, which was turning pale in the chill. Eve again held the coat out to Villanelle, her anger softening. Villanelle finally reached for the coat, and they both saw that she was bleeding from a gash in her palm. The blood was running in a crimson line from the base of her pinkie down the side of her hand and fingers.

Villanelle shrugged her coat on, holding her hand out awkwardly to avoid smearing the sleeves with blood. Eve reached for her when she had finished zipping up her coat and brought the bleeding hand up to her face to check the gash for glass.

“It’s fine,” Villanelle said, but her hand was shockingly cold in Eve’s grasp, her long fingers half-curled like question marks, and pale. Eve brushed her thumb gently over the cut, inspecting it for debris and checking the depth. Villanelle shivered a little. Impulsively, Eve brought the hand to her mouth and kissed it, warming it with her breath. The salty, coppery taste of Villanelle’s blood stuck to the tip of her tongue. She kissed it again, then looked at Villanelle.

Villanelle gazed back at Eve steadily, her eyes colorless in the leeching yellow light of the street lamps. In the cold wavering light, Eve was reminded of their night on Tower Bridge together. It felt like another lifetime despite how recently they had come together. A time when Eve did not take Villanelle’s hand and kiss it. Eve was overcome with an abrupt longing. She wished she had kissed Villanelle then, on the bridge. And the evening before that, as they danced. She felt a dread sense that their time for kissing and touching was finite and winding down like grains of sand dropping in an hourglass, and that she had already wasted a good portion of it.

“Are you going to come home with me?” Eve thought it sounded strange even as the words left her mouth. _Home_. Neither of them had a home, not really. “Back to the flat, I mean,” she corrected herself. She did not want Villanelle to disappear into the night. But Villanelle nodded.

That night they went to bed in separate rooms for the first time. Eve did not protest or ask questions when Villanelle made her way quietly to the studio. This was who Villanelle was, she thought as she lay alone in the master bed, looking at the grey shadows on the ceiling. Erratic. Impenetrable. Violent. Dangerous. _In danger, too_ , Eve supposed. _Vulnerable_.

She found herself naming a long string of words, conjuring up everything she knew about Villanelle. _Soft_ , she thought. _Soft, soft, soft. Beautiful._ The most beautiful thing Eve had ever seen.

The next morning there was a huge dump of files on her computer from the Bitter Pill office. She called Jamie and Bear. Villanelle had returned to acting relatively normal, except that she had not started training for the day yet. She was walking around in a black and white silk robe with a tessellated pattern, a piece that had been in her original luggage. It fell open nearly to her ribs, showing the curve of both breasts and inviting Eve’s mind elsewhere. Villanelle sipped orange juice from a small glass and silently came to sit behind Eve on the floor where Eve was folded in front of her laptop. She slipped her legs around Eve and leaned her cheek into Eve’s shoulder, breathing into her hair, resting there.

Eve, surprised by the intimacy, placed her hand protectively on Villanelle’s leg as her call was picked up.

“You got it all?” came Jamie’s voice.

“I got a hell of a lot, thank you. I still need to look through it. Want to break anything down for me?”

“We haven’t had time to look through most of it. I’m counting on you for that.”

“Of course. Any stand outs? Who is dealing with who?”

“ _Whom,”_ Villanelle whispered into Eve’s hair, her lips moving against the curls. Eve strained to turn her neck around, frowning at Villanelle incredulously.

“I thought you were going to be too tired to be annoying this morning,” Eve retorted. Villanelle chuckled.

“Heh. That’s funny,” she replied, and re-buried her face into Eve’s neck.

“Is She there?” Jamie asked.

“She has a name,” Eve replied, almost snapping at him. Why did everyone do that? Why did absolutely everyone avoid saying her name, as if by saying it they would conjure some evil into their lives? Or as if by saying it instead of saying “ _Her”_ , in that pained and meaningful intonation, they would remind Eve that Villanelle existed and all would be shattered? Didn’t they know that Eve never stopped thinking about Villanelle? Not a single day, not one garish turn of the sun had gone by without Villanelle crossing Eve’s mind since the day Eve saw photographs of Victor Kedrin’s blood-soaked corpse. “She’s not You-Know-Fucking-Bloody-Who,” Eve finished. “You can say Villanelle.”

“Jesus, sorry,” Jamie replied, taken aback.

“You know, everyone does that to me, too,” Villanelle interrupted again, mumbling into Eve’s ear. “ _You need to forget about Her! She is making you soft!”_ Villanelle did an impressive imitation of Konstantin’s voice.

“Okay, you know what—” Eve removed the phone from her ear and put Jamie on speaker, feeling fragmented by the overlapping conversations.

“Listen,” Jamie continued, “everyone is dealing with everyone. All of those fellows and the people who work for them are buying and selling constantly.”

“Probably half of it is done under the table,” Eve conceded, thinking of how much cash had changed hands the previous night at the cellar.

“This only scratches the surface,” Jamie agreed.

“What about deaths?”

“Well. You’ve got your average spread. Some aunties. A family attorney. Someone’s daughter.”

“Yikes, what happened to her?”

“Definitely not murder. Kicked in the head by a horse.”

“Ugh,” Villanelle interjected. “Horses are disgusting.”

Ignoring her, Eve pressed on.

“Okay, do any of these agents have a record? Run-ins with the police?”

“Sure, you’ve got your drink-driving and whatnot, but—Eve—it’s not the agents that are interesting. A lot of the fighters have been booked for prostitution, minor drugs charges, the like.”

At this, Eve craned her neck again to make eye contact with Villanelle.

“Recent?” she asked.

“Some yes, some no. It’s varied.”

“They’re picking up prostitutes and inviting them to fight,” Eve breathed. “Who was pimping them out? Did they have someone in common?”

“I don’t know yet. You’ll have to sort through everything we got. I can keep looking. But you know what they do have in common?”

“Spit it out.”

“All three of the dead men had been booked for prostitution. The first body found in the ring? Guess who paid his bail six months earlier?”

“Joseph Menzil.”

“Bingo.”

“I don’t suspect Menzil of anything.”

“Neither do I. I know he wouldn’t have asked us to dig in if he had anything to hide besides tax evasion and pretty boys.”

“Shit,” said Eve, coming to a realization. She had been deeply annoyed the previous night to be so close to the agents and have the night get derailed before she could overhear any meaningful conversation. Now, she realized, it didn’t matter. “I don’t need to get the agents drunk,” she breathed, squeezing her hand where it still rested on Villanelle’s leg as she turned again to look at her. Villanelle raised her head from Eve’s shoulder blade. “ _You_ need to get the _fighters_ drunk.”

Eve spent the morning in a deep fugue, losing time and place and sense of self as she pored over the new files on her computer. Accounts, photographs and news articles passed under her fingertips, assimilating into the narrative she was writing in her head. She scribbled notes onto a legal pad that she kept next to her laptop. She returned over and over again to the photographs of the three dead men, searching for meaning in the way that their limbs were arranged or their bodies were cut. The photograph of the first man intrigued her the most.

His name was Lau Jansson. He had been blonde, fit and barely twenty-five. His blood was pooled under his prostrate body. The words of the poem she had heard the previous night came back to Eve’s mind in fragments as she stared at him.

_—Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine—_

Eve scribbled this into the margins of her notebook, wishing she could recall the rest. The recitation, however fragmented, had struck her to the core at the time. Eve had never written a poem in her life. She was not an artist; she didn’t even keep a journal. Still, the words had tugged at something inside her and rang true. She remembered the cool wet feeling of Villanelle’s blood against her lips. 

_—Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine—_

“Villanelle!” she called, waking from her daydream and letting her pen fall onto the notebook’s open page. Villanelle’s head appeared from around the corner, where she had been making Eve a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Her loose blonde hair fell from her shoulders like a thin pale waterfall. All morning, Villanelle had crept around the apartment tidying and bringing Eve small things as if to apologize for her outburst the previous evening. Maybe Villanelle was not capable of apologizing or understanding Eve’s feelings. She was clearly capable, however, at sucking up to Eve.

“It’s a little strong,” Villanelle replied, in reference to the coffee.

“Oh—thanks—no,” Eve stammered. “Will you come look at these?” She waved Villanelle into the sitting room again, and Villanelle, who was still wearing nothing but her robe, padded over in her bare feet and knelt next to Eve to gaze at the photographs on Eve’s laptop.

“What do you notice?” Eve asked, fiddling with her own masses of hair.

“You are a real freak, you know,” Villanelle grumbled.

“Trust me, I know.”

“Looks like…hmmm. A super ugly room.”

“Villanelle!”

“What? It is! Cute boy, though.”

“They’re all cute.”

“Do we have it in the budget for a _ménage á trois?_ I didn’t think so.”

“What about these cuts?” Eve asked. “This blood?”

Villanelle paused, looking at the photographs for longer.

“They were cut many times after they were killed,” she finally said. Eve felt excitement stirring in her stomach, and shifted, stretching her folded legs.

“Go on.”

“The cuts here—” she pointed “—and here. That’s enough. You can see where the blood has pooled. That was what did it. The rest…” she shrugged. “Not necessary.”

“But we know they weren’t really knife-fighting,” Eve urged. “So why the extra cuts? Look, did you know? When I was researching your kills, we brought in a blood spatter expert. I learned so much about you from that man.”

“About me?”

“Yes. I learned where you stabbed, at what angle, how far you bring back your hand before you stab again. I learned that you prefer to hold your knives with an icepick grip, not a hammer grip.” Eve picked up the pen again and demonstrated. “You can learn a lot from blood spatter. Even how many seconds has passed between one attack and another.”

Villanelle pushed out her bottom lip and nodded, looking impressed.

“Wow, Eve. You were obsessed.”

“It was my job.”

“Ha!”

“So what do you think, then, looking at the others?” Eve pointed at the remaining two photographs of the other men’s bodies.

“Hm. Not so much spatter.”

“Except for the blots here. And here. On the edges of the ring.”

“They were brought in afterward.”

“Yes. I think so.”

“This man was killed in the ring.” Villanelle pointed at Lau Jansson. “The others were brought in after they died and cut up.”

Eve stood then. She dropped the pen again and grasped her hair into a bundle before letting it fall once more.

“But why?”


	12. Anise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is the album EUSA by Yann Tiersen. I recommend you listen to Pern through Lok Gweltz as that's what I played on repeat as I wrote this.
> 
> This was a joy to write and it's my love letter to the entire KE fandom.

Villanelle finally mustered the resolve to train a little when Eve left the apartment that afternoon. Eve had been excitable all morning, overflowing with ideas and uncatalogued information that made Villanelle feel tired. Still, she had stayed close to Eve, orbiting around her in the apartment as if being near Eve would ward off another unexpected fit like last night’s. Eventually, Eve had left to go for one of her long walks on the phone with Jamie and Bear. She needed minds to bounce her ideas off of—someone besides Villanelle.

Villanelle didn’t feel bad for the man she’d beaten. Everyone can use a good pounding now and then. What bothered her was the lack of control—she had not planned or chosen to break his hand and concuss him. She had cut her own hand in the process. Something had reared up inside her suddenly like hot vomit in the back of her throat. She had been blind, helpless to the impulse. Would she just lose control every time she heard Elton John for the rest of her life like some sick brainwashed…psychopath? The word dropped into her mind, an unwelcome visitor.

No stranger to intrusive thoughts, Villanelle ignored it and briefly considered playing Elton John in the apartment while Eve was out, just to see what would happen. She had lain awake with the song stuck in her head the previous night. Alone in the studio bed, twisting the sheets furiously in her hands, Villanelle had gritted her teeth, hot tears running from her eyes as if she were sweating out a fever.

She decided against playing it almost immediately, instead using the apartment’s sound system to put on an album by a French modern classical pianist. Shortly before she met Eve for the first time, she had heard the pianist perform the collection live when she was posing as an usher at L’Olympia Bruno Coquatrix to poison a visiting politician’s champagne. She had actually enjoyed the music, especially as a soundtrack to watching the man dying on the floor in front of her, twitching and foaming from the mouth.

She finally changed out of her silk robe into a sports bra and joggers, letting the movements of the piano guide her into a slow warm up—pushups, arm stretches, lunges. She narrowed her focus into her own body, stuffed it into her muscles and skin. Her right hand throbbed where she had sliced it. She had turned the music up loud enough that she could almost feel the lowest notes in her sternum, in her bare feet where they danced across the hardwood floor as she moved into her favorite opening combination, shadowboxing with her right hand to avoid opening the cut.

It was for this reason that she did not at first hear the heavy knocking at the door. She suddenly became aware of its presence during a lull in the third movement. She froze immediately, listening for it again, then swiftly retrieved her favorite knife from where it was stowed in her coat pocket, hung on a hook near the front door.

She stood behind the door, listening. Maybe it was a neighbor coming to complain about the level of her music. Maybe it was someone finally come to kill them. If it was the latter, they would soon break in and Villanelle would be crouched behind the door with a switchblade. She was grateful that Eve wasn’t home. Just in case.

“Come on, Villanelle!” a familiar, gruff, annoyed voice called, muffled through the thick door. “I know you are there! I can hear you playing Yann Tiersen!” His Russian accent was unmistakable.

Shocked, Villanelle straightened from her half-crouch and almost unlocked the door, then remembered herself and looked through the peephole. Konstantin stood on the narrow landing outside, pale and unshaven, bundled in a long black coat, grey scarf and wool cap. She did not see signs of anyone else. Still, she hesitated. What if it was a trick?

She moved to the other room and turned the music off so that she could hear better. The knock came again, persistent and deep.

“Are you going to break down my door?” she finally spoke, her face back at the peephole.

“I brought you these,” Konstantin replied, lifting a package of black licorice from his deep coat pocket. “I know you love them.”

Villanelle pulled the bolt and yanked the door open.

“That’s easy,” she replied, sneering. “I eat everything.” She snatched the package from him and ushered him into the narrow kitchen, slamming the creaky old door behind him and pulling the bolt again.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, wanting simultaneously to hug him and stab him. “How did you find me?”

“I have been looking for you this whole time,” Konstantin said, as if it should be obvious, his bushy eyebrows low over his eyes. “I still have your passport and cash. You said you don’t want to go with me, I am not family—fine. But I think you will be dead if I don’t get you these things, and I cannot live with that.”

“Are you crazy? Why didn’t you leave already?”

“Actually, it is less pressing now that MI6 decided to leave me alone. I will get out. But I need Irina first, and I can’t get her yet. So, I also needed to find you while I wait.”

Villanelle shook her head, incredulous.

“You are looking good,” Konstantin said, finally smiling as he looked her up and down. Villanelle ignored this, opening the package of licorice and taking out a chunk.

“No chit chat,” she said, stuffing it into her cheek. “How did you find me?”

“I followed the Polastri woman. I knew you would be with her.”

“How.”

“Because you are insane about her.”

“No, how did you follow her?”

“I pull her credit card information; she has taken flight to Vienna. Okay, I go to Vienna and show the cabbies and car rentals at the airport your photograph. I offer money. Yes, one says, you rented a car with cash and the car was dropped off in Prague. Okay, I go to Prague. Now this is good; I am actually stuck. You two disappear. No one has seen you. No credit cards. Good job.”

Villanelle smirked at him with a mouth full of licorice. He suddenly smiled broadly, his round cheeks becoming rosy in the warmth of the apartment.

“Here is the best part,” Konstantin continued, and began to chuckle. “I am here for a week. I think I have to give up. Then yesterday I am having a coffee and she just…walks right by the window of the café.” He laughed harder, then. “Ha! Ha ha ha! She walked right by me. I follow her onto the tram. She brings me right here.” His eyes began to fill with tears from the laughter, but he stopped short when Villanelle’s arm lashed out, grabbing the collar of his shirt. She pressed the knife to his throat and swallowed her licorice.

“What do you want with her?”

“Oh, come on, Villanelle!” Konstantin barked angrily. “She is not the point! Forget about her!”

“Mm. Can’t do that.”

“I just want you to get out, okay? You need to get out! She is a weak spot. Other people can use her to find you. You can’t be in Europe right now, do you understand?”

“Why do you care?”

“Because. I love you.” His eyes were bright and earnest. She let go of his collar and removed the knife, though she kept it folded and warm in her palm. She leaned against the counter of the kitchen, mulling the word over in her brain. _Love._

“What does that mean?” she finally asked. “How do you know that you love someone?”

“It means a lot of different things to different people,” Konstantin said, spreading his hands helplessly.

“What does it mean to you?”

He sighed through his nose.

“It means that I hurt when they are hurting. It means that I want to bleed if it stops their bleeding.”

Villanelle flexed her right hand, feeling the ache of the cut, remembering the way that Eve had kissed her last night and then licked a smear of Villanelle’s blood from her lips.

“I just want you to be safe,” Konstantin finished, his voice quiet and urgent.

“I can’t leave yet,” Villanelle replied. “I just need one fight.”

“Fight? What are you talking about?”

“Just a little…bareknuckle boxing.”

Konstantin exploded with laughter again, his chest shaking.

“Why the hell would you do that?”

“To help out Eve. Also, I can make a lot of money.” The fifty-thousand dollars had been on her mind since Boris had mentioned the sum.

“You can’t help Eve. Leave Eve alone.”

“Oh my god, why does everyone CARE so much?!” Villanelle yelled.

“She has brought you nothing but trouble!” Konstantin growled.

Villanelle lowered her voice, almost whispering.

“You see…that’s not true. Actually, I have been thinking about it. I have had time to think, you know? A lot. And it turns out—I don’t think Eve has ever brought me trouble. The only trouble she has brought me is when I have been punished for trying to see her. Or when you and everybody else won’t shut up about leaving her alone! They tell me she is dead, they tell me she doesn’t care about me, they try to kill Mr. Moustache so that she never wants to see me again. Why, I ask myself? Who gains from this? Not me. Not Eve. The Twelve. But now I know. They don’t want me distracted with Eve because when I am distracted with Eve, I am not in their control. I am not giving them more power, more money. I used to think all the clothes, all the cash gave me freedom. But it was just to keep me quiet while I was tied up like a fucking dog! You say she will bring me trouble? I say that no one has tried to strangle me or stab me for three weeks, so maybe I like this kind of ‘trouble’.”

Villanelle took a long breath. The speech had surprised her. Even she didn’t know that she had so many words. Konstantin stared at her with wide eyes, then shook his head.

“You will get bored.”

Villanelle scoffed.

“The thing is, I am always bored. I have always been bored. But at least now when I wake up, I don’t feel like there is something horribly missing. I wake up and I feel…” she lifted her arms, the knife still tucked in one hand. “Like I have two arms again.”

“This is why you don’t understand love,” Konstantin replied. “You are selfish. You don’t understand that she is in danger every moment she is with you.”

Villanelle narrowed her eyes.

“You think we don’t understand that? Then what is it called when you let someone make their own choices instead of choosing for them?”

A long silence rang out between them.

“One fight,” Villanelle whispered at last. “Come watch me, Konstantin.”

He put his hand on his forehead, shaking his grey head incredulously.

“They think my name is Irina Vasiliev,” Villanelle added. At this, Konstantin roared with laughter again.

Eve returned to the apartment in the late afternoon, flushed with the cold and excited, brimming with ideas and her arms full of groceries. She bore two bottles of Prosecco, a bottle of Slivovitz, red grapes, pears and thick wedge of plastic-wrapped gouda. Villanelle, after making Konstantin leave, had debated with herself on whether to tell Eve that she had seen him. She hid her new passport and the wad of cash, totaling nearly £100,000, under the mattress of the studio bed.

When Eve burst into the apartment, carrying the chill from outside, loaded with packages, a broad smile on her face, her deep brown eyes crinkling with happiness, Villanelle felt something inside her break. She could not tell Eve that they had been found, even by someone who professed he had good intentions. She did not want to see Eve’s face fall. She did not want to break the enchantment that lay over the early winter evening.

From their second-floor window in the sitting room, they could see the early setting of the sun. The twilight was pink and orange, cold and pale between the buildings. Pigeons scattered themselves over the tangerine sky as Eve poured them glasses of Slivovitz and they lowered themselves down to watch the sky change from the floor, leaning their elbows against the wooden windowsill. Villanelle put on the Yann Tiersen album again. What if she broke this moment, what if she said to Eve what Konstantin had said to her?

_It’s not safe. I need to leave. I can’t stay. I want to stay but I can’t stay. I need to leave._

What if she said that she loved Eve?

What if she said that she didn’t know what love was?

The brandy burned her throat and coated the back of her tongue. She put her hand on Eve’s knee, then slid it up the inside of her thigh.

They didn’t say a word to each other as they undressed. Somehow, not a single word. Mute and attuned, they quickly shed themselves of their layers. One sweater thrown to the floor next to them. Slacks, shimmied down thighs, shoved aside by the sole of Eve’s foot. Underwear, thin and elastic, discarded as easily. They sat naked and cross-legged in front of each other next to the window as the light faded, their hands clasped between their laps, kissing deeply.

Eve shuffled her body so that her legs were close enough to circle Villanelle’s waist. She leaned back onto both elbows and pulled out her hair tie. Her jungle of dark hair spread out across her shoulders as she shook her head slightly. Villanelle knew that it was a show for her. She watched silently.

Chaotic piano notes stumbled through her head as she looked at Eve. Eve’s legs, parted where her calves encircled Villanelle’s hips, were a curved path to her dark pubic hair. Above that, her hipbones curved like a hilltop and faded again into her flat stomach, her swelling ribcage, her small and pointed breasts.

Propped up on her elbows, Eve reached for the bottle of Slivovitz again and took a deep drink. She licked her lips, setting it aside. Only this room existed: the thunder of the piano, the fading light and the two of them filling the empty spaces.

Villanelle folded forward and bit gently at Eve’s calf. When Eve made a quiet sound, she did it again. She started to work her way up the inside of Eve’s thigh, but Villanelle’s hip flexers, sore from drilling blocks and kicks, would not let her bend forward enough. She raised herself to her knees, then slid forward onto her stomach, pressed Eve flat against the cold hardwood floor, and began kissing the inside of her thighs in earnest.

Eve dropped from her elbows onto her back with a faint thud, the bottle of brandy still in one hand. Villanelle ran her hands up Eve’s hips, her stomach, her nipples.

Why did she want to cry again?

Bracing her arms around each hipbone, Villanelle ran her tongue from Eve’s navel down to her pubic hair. With her thumb, she brushed the curls aside and pushed the flat of her tongue onto Eve’s clit. Eve cried out, pushing herself up toward Villanelle’s mouth. She was always loud when Villanelle went down on her. Villanelle worked slowly, the taste of brandy still rough in her mouth, her hands slipping under Eve’s ass to lift her off the unforgiving ground. Eve’s breath came hot and thick.

After only a minute, Eve maneuvered herself back onto her elbows, then her hands, then sat fully up and grasped Villanelle on the side of her head, pulling Villanelle’s head up and away from her pelvis. She kissed Villanelle with passion, her cheeks like red flags. Eve scooted herself even farther into Villanelle’s lap, her legs now wet with saliva.

They pushed their fingers into each other without a word, without permission, almost simultaneously.

They said each other’s names. The ‘v’ in each word sounded the same to Villanelle, buzzing against their lips.

Villanelle knew instinctively that Eve felt what she felt: a deep pressure, a terrible release, a heat, a wet slide of fingers, a surge of pain and pleasure. They tightened their free hand on each other’s backs, pulling the other closer, tighter, squeezing.

Villanelle thrust firmly with her hand and Eve cried out loudly, then gasped. Villanelle felt it in every movement they made: her hand in Eve was Eve’s hand in her. She throbbed where Eve throbbed. The pulse in her throat beat where she could see Eve’s leaping. _It means that I hurt when they are hurting_.


	13. Bone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are nearing the end, folks. Only three more chapters.

Villanelle had unzipped her. Eve’s body was a dress undone and laid bare. She could do it so easily, just with her eyes. She could run them down Eve like she had first unzipped her dress in Eve’s kitchen: top to bottom, unraveling her as she went.

They had fucked each other on the floor in front of the window until they couldn’t sit up like that any longer— _their hands moving in tandem, connecting them at the waist, so wet that it ran down Eve’s wrist the way Villanelle’s blood had run down her palm, had Villanelle come on Eve’s hand, wait, women didn’t come like that, well, did they, didn’t they, they did_ —thoughts stumbled chaotically through Eve’s head. When, their legs going numb, they had untangled themselves from this position, Villanelle had run her hand from the nape of Eve’s neck all the way down her ass and then between her legs. Again. Again.

She had wrapped her strong arms around Eve from behind and Eve was on the floor on all fours and Villanelle’s hand did not stop moving, she was zipping and unzipping Eve, opening and closing, and her hand was reaching around and touching Eve right there and Eve was slipping against it—her fingers, her palm, her wrist—and everything was too wet, too slippery to get a grip, and Eve cried out in frustration and heard Villanelle moan in response, and she could feel behind her that Villanelle was touching herself too, and Villanelle pulled her closer, firmer, so that her fingers hit Eve again just right and Eve could feel Villanelle’s other hand jerking against herself and that made her come, unexpectedly, her body folded in on itself until she screamed, and Villanelle was coming too, wasn’t she, Eve could hear her shuddering gasp and feel her fingers lose their rhythm, and Eve was crumpled like a dress, open and uneven.

Eve had fallen asleep briefly on the floor, dozed off with cheese and brandy making her stomach tight. There was a light blanket over the two of them when she woke, but the floor was cold and hard under her naked body and she groaned, trying to sit up. Her bad shoulder stiffened savagely. She let her head fall back and hit the floor again. She rubbed her bare legs together. Even her pussy was sore: a thin ache. She hadn’t had this much sex this regularly in years, and it showed. _God, I’m old,_ she thought.

When her shoulder loosened she sat up more carefully, looking at Villanelle. She wasn’t asleep. She was gazing at Eve steadily, her eyes half-lidded.

“Hi, Eve.” It was almost a whisper. Eve grinned then, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest. She reached down and stroked the hair on the side of Villanelle’s face gently, tucking it behind her ear. She felt a longing to murmur to her, a long string of meaningless words, a lullaby about her cheeks and her hands and the freckles at the corner of her eyes.

The room was dark now except for the strained and bitter light of the streetlamps outside that filtered through the window. Eve shivered.

“You are cold?” Villanelle breathed. “Have some more brandy.”

Eve found the bottle of Slivovitz and took a swig. It was sweet and then fiery, warming her throat, chest, and finally stomach. She held the bottle out to Villanelle.

“I don’t think I can sit up,” Villanelle muttered, wincing. Her hand appeared from under the thin blanket and lay across her abdomen. “I’m too old to be lying on a floor.”

“ _You’re_ too old?” Eve laughed. She reached for one of the unopened bottles of champagne and began to remove the cage.

“Hey,” Villanelle complained, “Not without me!” She reached her hand up then toward Eve, and Eve helped pull her up. Villanelle groaned as she straightened.

“Then take it back about being old,” Eve said, uncorking the bottle with a loud _pop_ and a wet hiss of air. Villanelle’s eyebrows knit together over her large eyes, which glittered in the half-darkness.

“You haven’t broken as many ribs as I have,” she muttered.

Eve looked at her anew then, recalling with a flash the things she did not know about Villanelle. Oksana Astankova wasn’t really dead the way they both liked to pretend. She had just retreated so far into Villanelle that she could not be seen. She was still inside, still lived there deep down, formed her bones and the things that she had done to break them.

“Let me guess,” Eve drawled, taking a sip of the champagne from the top of the bottle, then handing it to Villanelle. They were both going to get a little drunk at this rate. “You jumped onto the hood of a moving car to assassinate a former KGB officer.”

Villanelle laughed just as the champagne hit her lips, and foam sprayed from the bottle and her mouth as she choked. “Don’t be stupid!” She wiped the back of her hand across her lips, then licked them.

“I’m just kidding. What did you do?”

“You don’t have to _do_ anything to get your ribs broken in prison,” Villanelle replied. “Guards just really like to kick me.”

Eve felt a sinking in her stomach as she remembered Villanelle’s face in her apartment in Paris. Eve had been too scared and too angry at the time, every nerve on fire, to be concerned that Villanelle’s face was bruised and cut. Villanelle had just gotten out of prison for the second time. One cheek had been so swollen that Villanelle had only been able to talk out of the other side of her mouth. Eve wondered if her ribs had been broken then, too. Had Eve stuck a knife into an abdomen already lined with cracked bone?

“Okay,” Villanelle admitted, handing the bottle back to Eve. “I pinched a guard on the butt once. I maybe deserved that one.”

The joke didn’t land well with Eve. She imagined Oksana, twenty years old in a women’s prison in Russia, a bird in a cage being stomped on until the cage was so crushed that the bird couldn’t move, couldn’t even flutter. She felt a creeping guilt. Was she really going to watch Villanelle be hurt for entertainment in a white-taped ring? That body that had just held her so hot and close and made her come?

“You don’t have to fight, you know,” Eve suddenly said. Villanelle’s eyes grew wide.

“But I want to fight!”

“I’m having second thoughts. Is it really necessary?”

“Of course it is. We need those boys to talk.”

“And it’s worth it for you to get hurt?”

“Come on, Eve… _now_ you care?”

“I always cared,” Eve grumbled, though this wasn’t totally true. She hadn’t really spent time thinking deeply about a prison guard’s boot stomping on Villanelle’s stomach and face. Now the idea seemed to physically hurt her. She put the wine aside, feeling a little sick, and covered her face with one hand.

“I won’t get hurt,” Villanelle urged. “Not that bad, anyway. You saw those matches. The referee stops them as soon as someone is down. I’ll throw it if I have to! I want to fight. I’m ready. There’s no more I can train without a partner anyway. I want to fight as soon as I can.”

At this, Eve lowered her hand and looked at Villanelle in surprise.

“What about your arm?”

Villanelle held out her left arm and flexed it. Her scar strained along the bulge of her bicep.

“It’s okay. I think.” She reached out and put her hand on Eve’s. “Please? Will you let me talk to Menzil?”

Eve was taken aback. She didn’t know if she had ever heard Villanelle use the word ‘please’ before. Villanelle scooted forward and took the thin blanket from where it was strewn over her knees. She wrapped it around Eve’s shoulders. Eve could tell that she was being buttered up, but she liked it.

“Okay, sure,” she finally assented. “If that’s what you want.”

Villanelle grinned and scrambled up from her sitting position, her naked body both lithe and curved in the shadowy sitting room.

“Let’s go to bed, then, because I’m freezing.”

Eve willed the feeling of dread to leave her stomach. She wanted to go back to just before, when they had been clasped together like one body. Villanelle brought the open bottle of wine with them into the master bedroom dangling from one hand next to her naked thigh. Eve wiggled halfway under the covers, sitting up against the headboard, and then called for Villanelle.

“Come here, please.” _Please. Please._ Since when did they ask each other for things this way?

Villanelle crawled over and sat between Eve’s legs, leaning her long back against Eve’s front so that Eve had to wrap an arm around Villanelle’s waist and crane her neck around the side of her body. They worked on the bottle of wine, passing it back and forth until they were both well and truly drunk. Eve held Villanelle, smelled her, listened to her breath come through her lungs as they pressed on the back of Villanelle’s ribcage. Just like the first time they had slept together, in the hotel. But not like. Because now there was something else between them. It was something that made Eve hurt to imagine Villanelle’s broken ribs.

She fought to stay awake.


	14. Snow

Villanelle stood outside Joseph Menzil’s townhouse, her hands in her pockets. The street and sidewalk around her were coated in a thin wet snow. In Russia, snow was not like this. It suffocated everything constantly, thick and dry. It squeaked and crunched under your feet. Here it was wet and sparse. She had woken this morning to snow: finally. It seemed a long time coming. As she stood, thick wet flakes meandered down from dizzying grey heights. Villanelle was dressed to the occasion, wanting to impress. She wore a light blue suit with a grey button-up underneath, covered with her longest, darkest coat.

She had woken that morning naked and thirsty. One leg was thrown across Eve’s in the bed and sweat lay slick where their skin met. Brandy and champagne coated the back of her tongue. She had wanted to vomit. Didn’t she brush her teeth? Wasn’t there a water glass by the bed?

She hadn’t.

There wasn’t.

A butler let Villanelle into the entry of Menzil’s multi-story townhouse and took her wet coat. It was tastefully decorated—this Villanelle could appreciate. The butler led Villanelle through the narrow entry into a broad sitting room. The room was circular, had a high ceiling and one whole wall was simply a vast theater of floor to ceiling windows looking out onto a winter garden. Menzil was crumpled on a chaise lounge next to a coffee table that held a curved brass kettle and several porcelain cups on a tea tray. The white light, reflecting from the snow, was both harsh and inviting.

On the side table next to Villanelle, a flat blue ceramic dish held an assortment of keys, a notebook, a polished stone, two condoms and several euros. Next to the dish there was an open book, the pages pressed down by a black, glassy paperweight. Villanelle glanced at it.

_We sweat and pull at each other, climb_

_with our fingers the slippery ladders of rib._

_Wherever our bodies touch, the flesh_

_comes alive. Heat and need, like invisible_

_animals, gnaw at my breasts, the soft_

_insides of your thighs. What I want_

_I simply reach out and take, no delicacy now_

“Who looked into my bedroom?” Villanelle muttered, laughing to herself.

“Do you like poetry, Irina?” Menzil asked, stirring on his couch.

“No,” Villanelle replied, honestly, remembering to put on her Irish accent. “Not particularly.”

“That’s a shame, because, you see—” he sat up. He was wearing a dark blue robe. “—poetry likes us. It reaches into us and draws out our blood and sweat. It doesn’t care if we like it. It still whispers about us.”

Villanelle raised her eyebrows, creeped out. Menzil leaned forward over his coffee table and picked up a pipe. He struck a match with a hiss and took a puff of the pipe, then shook the match to oblivion. The sweet scent of tobacco and weed drifted through the space on the smoke.

“Coffee?” Menzil asked, gesturing toward the espresso tray.

“That’s very kind,” she replied, but shook her head. The very thought of the acidity hitting her stomach made a wave of nausea roll over her. Menzil poured himself a cup and looked her over.

“So, you want to fight?” he asked. Villanelle shoved her hands deeper into her pockets, bit her lower lip and took a breath.

“Yes.”

Outside, wet snow fell in fat elongated flakes. If they had been in the garden, they could have heard the soft patter of snow licking snow.

“Well, of course you can, my dear. Really, you were welcome to fight whenever you wanted. Will you--?” he waved her over, gesturing at a chair. She moved away from the entrance then, approaching the low table, the lounge and the enormous windows. The smell of espresso and tobacco tangled, sour in her nostrils.

“Whether you fight is not nearly as important to me as what information you find, although on a professional note—it is always nice to have more women in the ring. It changes things up. I’ll see if I can find a good match for you.” He paused, setting his cup down. “You have caused a stir, actually.”

Villanelle sat carefully, spread-legged in her pant suit with her forearms coming to rest on her knees.

“What kind of stir?” she asked.

“Rumor with the agents has it that you are a bit of a spitfire. I think they will bet heavily on you.”

“That’s good news for me.”

“Do you care about the money, then? I think you are not who you say you are.”

“I care about the money.”

“You are wearing a Chalayan jacket.”

Villanelle looked down at herself.

“So you see why I want the money,” she replied, shrugging as she straightened up. She was beginning to regret choosing an Irish accent, finding it to take too much focus. It wasn’t as fun when Eve wasn’t around to annoy, but she couldn’t drop it now. She and Eve had given up on keeping Villanelle an unknown after her public outburst, but they still couldn’t risk Menzil or anyone else learning more about her. No one could know they were together in Prague.

“Then I hope you win,” Menzil said simply. “I will make sure you have the address. The next match is in two nights. But—” he spread his hands so that his rings glittered on his fingers. “You came here in person, so I have to assume there is news. From Ms. Polastri?”

“Tell me about Lau Jansson.” Villanelle dropped the name into room, attempting to surprise him.

Eve had coached her on what to say, and when. Menzil stared at her silently for a moment, then sat back heavily, his coffee and pipe abandoned. His head fell back and he looked at the ceiling, sighing through his nose, but his expression was not one of annoyance.

“He was so beautiful,” Menzil finally said. Villanelle did not reply. She crossed her legs and looked out the window at the accumulating snow. “Maybe you can forgive that I was in love with him. And me an old man.”

At this Villanelle looked at him again.

“The age gap?” she asked. He lowered his gaze from the ceiling and nodded.

“I like the young men, I’m afraid.”

“He wasn’t so young. I knew a girl…” Villanelle paused. Did she want to tell this story? “…at university,” she went on. “She was in love with her teacher.” No, this speech was too awkward. “Anyway. It happens.”

“What can I say,” Menzil shrugged. “He loved fighting and he loved fucking. We spent a lot of time together, but he had others of course. When he was killed, I was sure that it was meant as a warning to me. But I didn’t know what I had done. Then…” he shook his head slightly and reached again for his espresso.

“The others. I barely knew them. One was the boyfriend of an agent, but the other had only come once. Just before he was killed. And he didn’t have a good fight, either. Absolutely terrible boxer. So I don’t understand. What it’s supposed to mean.”

“What if it doesn’t mean anything?” Villanelle asked.

“That someone is setting me up to look like I’m holding knife fights? Of course it means something.”

“Maybe not. Maybe the person killing them doesn’t know you at all.”

Menzil was silent then. Villanelle pressed on with Eve’s theory.

“Was Lau still turning tricks?”

“I suppose.”

“We think that Lau invited someone back to the first warehouse to have sex,” Villanelle said bluntly. “And he was murdered. Clearly. Not a knife fight. And then that man—” for it had to have been a man “—had found a whole new dumping ground. Easy. He asks Lau how he knew of this great empty place? Lau tells him only the fighters and the agents know. So. Next time, after he kills, he dumps the body on you again. He just needs to convince the next one and the next to tell him the location. Also easy.” Villanelle uncrossed her legs and rubbed her fingers together. “Money. Sex.”

“What makes you think this?”

“Blood,” said Villanelle simply. She did not want to explain why she would know about the signatures of serial killers, the way the bodies were cut up after they’d died. “And Eve…she is just good with hunches. She can sense things that other people don’t see. She can tell your agents are not involved. It’s the fighters.”

“Will you make him stop?” Menzil asked. Villanelle frowned. She spread her hands helplessly.

“Fuck if I know.”

He was crying silently. Villanelle put her hands down and shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” Menzil said in a soft voice, blinking. “Each. If you find him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poem excerpt is from "This Close" by Dorriane Laux


	15. Skin

The streets were slick with ice. The snow, churned by feet for two days and frozen overnight, was an uneven and slippery brown coating on the bridges and stairs of the city. Only the roofs still retained a stark white dusting, leeching the buildings of color.

Eve was nervous as they gave the password to enter the cellar, stepping from the treacherous street into the first narrow hallway.

“Will you stop looking at me like that?” Villanelle grumbled. Eve had been glancing hesitantly at her again, unable to stop herself from looking over and over at Villanelle’s cheekbones, her arched eyebrows, the fine tendrils of hair that escaped her tight French braid.

“I can’t believe this was my idea,” Eve sighed.

“Okay, it was Jamie’s idea,” Villanelle said, rolling her eyes. “Also—” she grinned “I think I am going to have fun. I haven’t beat anybody up in a long time now.”

“Villanelle, you assaulted a man about four days ago.” They were walking down the winding path to the main room, their footsteps echoing against the stone. “Which,” Eve added, “you still didn’t tell me the reason for.”

Villanelle paused and pretended to think.

“Hm. And I am not going to.”

They pushed through the door into the crowded room and immediately recognized Boris standing near the front, deep in conversation with a middle-aged woman. He caught Eve’s eye and waved at them. Eve made to join him, but Villanelle put her hand on Eve’s arm.

“I am going to…” she gestured lazily with a finger around the room, “mingle.”

“Mingle?”

“I’m supposed to be making friends, yeah? I will go trade stories about people I have punched and men I have fucked for money. Just like them. They will be delighted.”

Eve narrowed her eyes at Villanelle.

“ _Have_ you fucked men for money?”

Villanelle laughed as she turned away, her hands in the pockets of her cotton zip-up hoodie. “Oh, yeah. Definitely.”

Eve shook her head at Villanelle, but went to join Boris. He smiled broadly at her, his wispy white hair bouncing over his forehead as he introduced her to his companions.

“I am betting on Irina,” he confided happily to Eve. “Too bad you are not allowed to bet on your own fighter, eh? I did not want to tell everyone this because it makes the odds worse. But of course I would not lie!” He laid a hand dramatically over his heart, then laughed. “They ask me why I am betting so much on this new woman, have I seen her fight? I told them the truth! No, I haven’t seen her fight.” He laughed again. “What I saw was not a fight! Ha ha! That man was on the floor so fast. Grown man. She is so…” he clapped his hands together. “Fast!”

Surprised, Eve studied his jolly face. She hadn’t considered the commotion in the bar in this light yet. She tried to remember if she had ever actually seen Villanelle fight anyone. She had seen her push someone in front of a truck. Cut someone’s throat. Shoot a man. Those weren’t fights, either. Boris was right. Villanelle was lethally fast, and creative. Eve felt some of the tension she had been holding in her jaw release. Villanelle might not square up for fights often, but she also had a complete lack of empathy for strangers and their pain. She would not hold back.

Eve and Boris stayed near the front of the crowd as people were shooed away from the ring and into the seats by a couple of agents and the referee, who was a very short man in street clothes with nothing to differentiate him from the rest of the crowd. Menzil appeared next to her, sidling gently through the throng, touching friends lightly on the arm and murmuring as he came. He stood next to her seat, looking regal despite his plain clothes and short stature. 

“Why is it again that everyone is supposed to dress down?” Eve asked, a question that had come to her mind the last time she watched the fights but had been drowned out by a myriad of other more pressing issues. 

“On the off chance that we get raided,” Menzil replied, his eyes scanning the crowd. “The fighters can throw on their jackets and then we all look the same. Just a group of people in a cellar. Mmm. Dancing. Or whatever people do.”

“Great cover,” Eve replied sarcastically. But her thoughts strayed immediately to the night that she and Villanelle had danced together in the tearoom: their initial struggle for control, then the faltering relaxation. It was the first time that they had both given up control at the same moment. No bickering. No stabbing. No seduction. They had both, shakily, let go. Sunk into each other. Moved, without motive, as one.

Eve swallowed, dryly.

“She is talking to her competitor,” Menzil said, inclining his head. Eve followed his gaze to find Villanelle in the crowd standing next to another blonde woman, smiling cheerily and laughing.

“Oh, God,” Eve muttered, rolling her eyes.

“They seem to be getting along.”

“Trust me, she loves to butter you up and then shoot you in the back.”

Menzil laughed, patted Eve on the shoulder awkwardly, and started to move away as the first round of fighters entered the ring.

“Then I look forward to it,” he said as he left, but Eve only had eyes for Villanelle’s competitor. She had already researched her. Annika Moser was Austrian, a former mixed martial artist. She was ten years older than Villanelle, stocky, and a few inches shorter. In her own way, she was beautiful, with pale blonde hair and a chiseled jaw. It looked like she and Villanelle were flirting. Eve wanted to push her in front of a bus.

She barely saw the first three fights, though Boris was happily feeding her a running commentary. The smack of knuckles hitting skin and the occasional skin hitting floor were lost on her. She only started to relax by the last fight, beginning to notice that she could now tell the difference between confident and hesitant fighters. She began to recognize the different punches that she had seen Villanelle throw into her practice bag so many times over the past weeks. She began to see when someone’s foot was off-balance. She began to understand the excitement of the fights. Distantly, she wished that she had laid money on one of them.

When Villanelle and Annika at last entered the ring, Eve leaned forward eagerly. Villanelle did not look at Eve, but was smiling at Annika. They both put in mouth guards and shook out their arms. Annika was wearing a tight-fitted tank top, but Villanelle wore a thin, grey long-sleeved shirt. This was purposeful. Where others wanted freedom of movement, Villanelle wanted to hide the fresh scar on her left arm. Besides, she had told Eve, she was used to being restricted by her clothing.

She did not seem restricted as she waited behind her tape line, feet sliding into position and arms coming up to clench her bare fists under her wide hazel eyes.

“Go, Irina!” Boris called jovially next to Eve. Villanelle’s eyes danced, and when the referee gave the signal she burst forward, sending a flurry of punches at Annika, then a kick to her side.

Annika was well trained, and expertly shielded herself with her forearms and knees, unperturbed. She had a lot of experience on Villanelle, and it showed. Her counter caught Villanelle directly in the left eye. Villanelle danced backwards, shaking her head. She wiped the back of her forearm against the eye once, then again. She blinked rapidly, but shifted smoothly again into ready position.

“She is favoring her left side,” Boris commented as the match went on and the two women tested each other. When Villanelle got an opening she attacked with fury, but Eve could see after a minute that her eye was swelling shut. Furthermore, she was avoiding blocks with her left arm. Eve wanted to shout at her as Annika and Villanelle traded blows and retreated, beathing heavily, light on their feet, pink marks beginning to show on their pale skin. Eve wanted to scream at her not to telegraph her injury.

Could she win, after all? Eve knew that Villanelle fought dirty and used her environment to her advantage. She had no environment here, could not fight dirty. This was not life and death. This was just reflex and skin. Eve found herself clutching the hard wooden edges of her seat, her jaw locked again, gritting her teeth together.

It became clear that Annika had noticed Villanelle was favoring her left side. She threw more weight into her crosses and tested the side with a few swift kicks. Villanelle parried her attacks and landed several loud blows on the side of Annika’s cheek, then had to pace backward again when Annika lashed out with her fist, glancing at Villanelle’s ear.

Annika drove forward in earnest, feinting at a left uppercut but instead sending a rapid kick with her right leg directly into Villanelle’s upper left arm. Villanelle flinched visibly, and her left guard dropped. Annika’s foot drove again, connecting with the side of Villanelle’s mouth with a loud smack. Villanelle staggered; Eve heard her own wooden chair squeal as she stood involuntarily.

For a moment it seemed that Villanelle would fall. She stumbled backward and Annika advanced, but Villanelle caught her own right leg behind herself in a deep lunge, then exploded forward out of the crouch, catching Annika square in the stomach with the heel of her bare foot. There was a low hoot as the air exploded from Annika’s lungs. She lurched backward, but Villanelle was already on top of her, her fists flying. Annika instinctively twisted away from the punches as she fell, her knees and then her palms hitting the ground.

The referee stepped forward. The fight was over.

Eve heard herself shouting—was it her? Boris was pounding her on the back.

Villanelle straightened and whipped around to look at Eve, her chest heaving, her punched eye a lurid shade of pink. She pulled out her mouth guard and a stream of blood gushed down the front of her chin from where she’d been kicked. Looking surprised, Villanelle spat a mouthful of blood onto the cement floor. The referee shouted at her from where he was crouched next to Annika.

“Hey! Don’t do that!”

Someone rushed forward and brought Villanelle a cup. She spat into it again and grinned, her mouth crimson.

“Good thing I had the mouth guard,” she mumbled, her lip already swelling. Eve could distinctively hear her Russian accent. Or maybe it was just the swelling. Annika stood again, also removing her mouthguard. Her lips pressed together, she approached Villanelle and shook her hand. It was hard to tell who had come off worse. Annika’s cheeks were also beginning to swell. Villanelle had landed several merciless punches.

“Oh, God bless you,” Boris was saying next to Eve. “You will let me buy you a drink? I just won a lot of money.” He whooped.


	16. Knives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Finale.
> 
> Thank you, everyone for sticking with me through my first fanfic.  
> Feel free to hit me up on Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/perfume-knives

Villanelle sat on the cement floor as the crowd thinned out, talking to Annika, who stood over her. They pulled socks on; their shoes sitting next to them open and untied.

“I would kick your ass in a real ring,” Annika was saying in her thick accent, shrugging on a cotton zip-up, then a thick parka. Villanelle did not mention, of course, that she spoke German fluently.

“I feel pretty kicked,” Villanelle responded, awkwardly forming the words around her swollen lip as she stuffed her feet into her lace up boots. A man approached them with their winnings, handing them each a wad of cash that was wrapped in a sandwich bag and taped with the same white tape used to mark out the floor.

“Thirteen thousand,” the man said to Villanelle, walking away. She grinned and looked up at Annika, who lifted her smaller package as if to make a toast and smiled wryly.

“Enjoy.”

Villanelle stuffed the package into her jacket pocket, which contained nothing else but her single key and her switchblade.

“Do you ever go out with them?” Villanelle asked as she laced up her boots, jerking her chin toward a small group of young men who were gathered in the corner, loitering and receiving attention from the agents. They had all fought, though none looked quite as banged up as Villanelle and Annika.

“Psh. I am too old for that, I think,” Annika replied, shrugging.

“Could you get me an invite?”

Annika looked surprised, but she shrugged again and nodded. She zipped up her parka and went to speak in the ear of her agent, a tall fat gentleman in a wool coat in the corner. Villanelle felt a pang then, wishing that Konstantin would have come watch her fight. She knew it was for the best, though. Despite the delivery of her cash and passport, Konstantin could not be trusted. At least, not around Eve.

The agent went to the group of men in the corner and spoke to them, pointing behind him at Villanelle. She smiled goofily when they looked. One detached himself from the group and made his way over.

“English, right?” he said. He had short-cropped brown hair that was glossy even in the fluorescent lighting, and his cheeks were exceptionally round and rosy, giving him an elfish look. “Staudenrauss says that you deserve a vodka.”

“I could definitely wash out my mouth,” Villanelle joked.

“I am Augustus,” he said, offering his hand to help her from the floor.

“Irina. Do you know a good place?”

“You can come with us, but we go to a gay bar in Vinohrady.”

“Sounds like my type of vodka.”

He looked her up and down, taking in her bomber jacket, cotton hoodie, joggers and Doc Martens.

“Maybe so.”

Villanelle glanced around the room until she found Eve. Eve was lingering near the entrance, waiting, watching Villanelle. Villanelle’s neck hummed warmly. She couldn’t wait to get back to the apartment later and listen to Eve gush about the fight. She would get into a late-night hot bath for her muscles. Maybe she would talk Eve into joining her. She imagined the wave of sudsy water as she pulled Eve into the bath on top of her, their knees colliding and then slipping between each other.

She stopped to talk to Eve as they left the room.

“I’ll be in Vinohrady,” Villanelle murmured. “Only one stop away from our place.”

“Cash,” Eve said, holding out her hand.

“Why? It’s mine,” Villanelle complained, even as she was removing the wad from her pocket and passing it to Eve.

“You trust these guys enough to walk around with that much money in your pocket?”

“I don’t trust anyone,” grumbled Villanelle. Eve handed her back a couple thousand Czech koruna.

“Buy them shots. Get them _super_ drunk before you ask questions,” she whispered.

“I _know_ ,” Villanelle drawled, rolling her eyes, but as she walked away she removed the tie from her braid and ran her fingers through her hair: their signal to each other. _Yes, I’ll meet you at the apartment later._

Villanelle got them as drunk as she could. The bartenders eyed their group with distaste as the bruised boys laughed and slapped each other’s backs and the bar top, taking their third shot of vodka. Villanelle had let herself have one. The cheap alcohol had burned the inside of her lip where it was split. She considered asking for a cup of ice to press against her aching eye, but she knew their group already stood out too much from the rest of the patrons of the bar.

Everyone was well dressed in the purple and red lighting of the little club. Tables ran along the opposite wall from the bar and disappeared around the corner. There was a small dance floor, but it was a weeknight and only a dozen people were dancing.

“You are really going to have a black eye,” Augustus told her cheerily after they tossed back their shots and retreated to their table.

“I know,” Villanelle said with resignation. “I can’t see shit.”

“Annika really got you, didn’t she? That kick to the face! Whew!” They all laughed, though Villanelle was annoyed at this turn in the conversation.

“She is good,” Villanelle admitted.

“We saw you two talking,” Augustus added with a wink. Villanelle gave a hollow laugh.

“She is not my type.”

“No?” he waved a hand around. “Who is?”

Villanelle cast her gaze around the bar, trying to focus in the odd lighting and with one good eye. The clientele was very young, European, well dressed. None of them were really her type.

“Them, I guess,” she said, nodding toward a couple sitting a few tables away.

“Both of them?”

“Why not? I—” Villanelle stopped short as her eyes focused, noticing who sat at the table behind the couple.

It was the man she had followed. She was sure of it. There was his cowlick and the twist of his upper lip. She felt cold. Could this be a coincidence? She looked away from the man and sat silently for a moment as the others continued their chatter. She wondered if they knew him. Should she ask? She didn’t want them to all look over at him.

But when, half an hour later, one of their group finally said his goodbyes and left the bar, Villanelle saw the man gather his things and also move toward the exit. Hastily, she made an excuse and threw her remaining handful of koruna on the table, telling them to buy themselves a last round as she put on her jacket and followed the man out of the bar.

She stayed well behind him as he went through the dark and slippery streets, winding into a back neighborhood that sloped up a hill with broad stairs and a steep, treacherous sidewalk slick with ice. She could not see the boy he was following; she was too far back. The streets were not busy and loud the way they had been in the tourist district where she last followed him, so she could not stay close.

She lost sight of him as his dark figure ducked around a corner. Rounding the same corner, Villanelle looked around for him, then nearly shrieked as two arms shot out of the dark alley next to her and shoved her up against the wall of the building. In a flash, there was the sharp point of a knife against her throat and an arm pinning her shoulder to the brick façade behind her. The man she had been following was handsome, though his nostrils were flared and his face was distorted with adrenaline, inches from her own.

“Who are you?” he hissed.

Villanelle gave it her all.

“Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t have any money, let me go--” she began to beg in an American accent, turning on immediate fake tears. He pressed the knife harder against her throat so that the edge sliced with a sting into the soft skin at her jugular.

“I heard you talking in an Irish accent at the bar,” he growled, giving her a shove so that the back of her head hit the wall behind her unexpectedly. “I’ve seen you following me before. I recognize you. Who are you?”

Villanelle’s head spun and she momentarily struggled for balance as her boots searched for purchase on a patch of ice under their feet. Instinct gripped her then as her head cleared and she let herself drop, kicking out at the man’s foot as she went so that they both crashed to the ground. Villanelle rolled quickly, scrambling up with her knife out of her pocket in an instant, but he was just as fast to get back on his feet.

They faced each other in a half-crouch in the dark alley, their breath loud and ragged in the cold air, their knives glinting in the one beam of light that glanced down the center of the alley. He was blocking the way out.

Villanelle felt a surge of anger. This is not how the night was supposed to go. She was supposed to be drinking brandy in a hot bath, dreaming up filthy things to do to Eve. In any other circumstance, this man would be pathetically out of his depth. If she had the right knife, she could have thrown it from this distance and hit him in the eye. If she had a gun, if she had a way out, if one eye wasn’t swollen half-closed, if she hadn’t taken her hair out of its braid so that it wasn’t falling into her face. Her heart pounded. She was not going to die like this, wearing _cotton_ , looking like a ketamine-dealing lesbian from Bristol who got mugged in an alley.

She growled low as they moved in half-circles, their eyes never leaving each other. He was pressing closer.

“Let’s not do this,” she sneered. “I don’t care about you. I’m just watching the boy.”

“Ooh,” he fake-pouted, “you care about the boy?” His voice was oddly warm and husky, almost mesmerizing. “You should hear how they sound when they squeal.”

Villanelle rolled her eyes. Psychopaths.

“I think I have heard more squealers than you,” she started to say, but before she could finish, he lunged.

She twisted aside as his knife flashed out toward her, but through her swollen eye she miscalculated his speed and the blade sliced across the back of her arm, cutting through her jacket and opening the skin underneath. She snatched his wrist at the apex of his lunge and used his momentum to slam his hand into the wall. She heard his fingers crunch against the brick, and the knife fell from his fingers as her switchblade came up and stabbed him in the throat.

Blood was running warmly down her arm and spraying her in the face. She stabbed him again and again, panting, then stepped away and let his body crumple to the ground. Her chest heaved as she listened to the gargle coming from his throat. A momentary wave of relief, control and ecstasy rolled over her. Then she stumbled backward.

“ _Fuck,”_ she said with a half-sob, realizing the implication of what had happened. She looked around her. There was blood sprayed on the wall of the alley and everywhere in the snow around her. It was running hot down her forearm in a stream and dripping steadily from her wrist into the slush. “ _Shit!”_

She took a deep breath to steady herself, clapping a hand over the open cut on her arm. She knew what she needed to do. She needed to cut a bandage from her shirt. She needed to scrub her face and hands on the snow as much as she could. She needed to throw his knife and her own into the Vltava. She needed to get to the apartment. Now. She needed to leave Europe.

When Villanelle burst into the apartment an hour later, the lights were on. Eve had been waiting up for her. She was sitting on the master bed with her legs folded under her, drinking a glass of wine and looking at her laptop. Her hair was down and the wild curls framed her soft face. Her relaxed expression turned to horror as she looked up and caught sight of Villanelle.

Villanelle knew how she must look: her face bruised and her lip split, her clothes torn, her hair pulled back into a hasty ponytail, dried blood crusted up her forearms, her eyes red-rimmed from crying.

“Villanelle!” Eve exclaimed, scrambling out of bed. Her voice, deep, familiar and concerned, caught Villanelle like a kick in the gut.

“I’m so sorry, Eve,” Villanelle said immediately. “I killed him.”

“Killed who?!” Eve gasped.

“The _man!_ The one we were looking for! I stabbed him. He jumped me with a knife—I—didn’t mean to. Eve, I have to leave.” In a daze, Villanelle walked through the sitting room to the studio, yanked the mattress up and retrieved her passport and cash. Eve trailed behind her, her eyes wide.

“Leave? What do you mean?” Her dark eyes locked on the passport. “Where did you get that? Where are you going?” A note of panic rose in her voice. Villanelle brushed by her again on the way to the bedroom, where she seized a suitcase and began to stuff things into it. Her passport. A box of tampons. Clothes.

“Villanelle!” Eve’s voice was hoarse with alarm. Villanelle spun to face her.

“I have to get out, Eve! I killed someone. My DNA is _all over him_. You know where it goes when someone tries to run my DNA? Straight to the Twelve. They will know I’m here. They will know _we_ are here.”

“You’re leaving me here?” Eve’s voice broke, and the sound gripped Villanelle by the throat. Villanelle stepped to her swiftly, taking her smooth hands. They were shaking.

“Listen to me, Eve,” she whispered. “You need to take the cash I won. You rent a car and you drive to Dresden. From there you can fly to London. _Don’t_ tell anyone you have been here. _Don’t_ contact Menzil. You throw away your phone and get a new one, understand? Tell Jamie—” she stumbled on her words as Eve began to cry “—tell Jamie to let Menzil know it’s over. He owes us a lot of money. _You will take mine for me, okay?”_

Eve just cried. Villanelle wanted to shake her, to make her stop. If she didn’t stop, Villanelle would cry, too. Was she already crying? 

“ _Eve!”_ Villanelle urged, putting her hands on Eve’s cheeks. “Tell me what I just said. Repeat it!”

“Why!”

“If they know you were here with me then they will kill you to get at me, and it will work, do you understand? Eve? _Don’t_ tell anyone. If you see Konstantin, _don’t_ talk to him. Repeat it!”

“Don’t talk to anyone,” Eve whispered, tears running out of the sides of her eyes and over Villanelle’s bloody fingernails. “Rent a car with the cash. Drive to Dresden. Go to London.”

Villanelle broke away from her and continued to throw things into the suitcase. Eve would do what she said. She had seen it in Eve’s eyes. If she had told Eve to get on the ground and crawl, she would have. If she told Eve to come with her, she would have. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. There was a roaring in her ears. She felt a hand on her arm.

“You need to wash up,” Eve said quietly. Villanelle looked at herself in the mirror. She knew it was true. They went to the bathroom and Eve began to fill the sink with hot water, gathering hand towels. Tears were still running down Eve’s face and her nose was beginning to stream, but she was quiet. Villanelle’s arms began to shake as she pulled off her ruined jacket and sweater, then started to scrub her hands in the basin of water. The sink quickly turned pink. Villanelle found an elastic bandage and wrapped it firmly around the crusting cut on her forearm.

When she turned, Eve’s bright eyes were locked on her, deep pools of brown.

“I’m never going to see you again,” Eve whispered, a sob catching at her throat. Villanelle closed the gap between them in an instant.

“I will find you when it’s safe. Eve Polastri, do you hear me? Don’t try to find me. You can’t try to find me this time, do you promise? Promise me. Eve!”

Eve shook her head, scattering tears.

“I will find you when it’s safe. I swear to God, I will find you. Eve. Listen to me. When have I ever stopped looking for you? Never. Never. I never stopped. You know I will find you. If I am alive, I will send for you.”

Eve sobbed in earnest, then. Villanelle pulled her into a tight hug, their hearts hammering against each other’s chests, then strode into the bedroom again. She pushed a final few belongings into her suitcase before coming to her bottle of perfume, slender and delicate, unlabeled. The perfume Villanelle had commissioned. She palmed it and zipped her suitcase.

Now, it had to be now. She couldn’t wait. She grabbed her dark wool coat and wrapped herself in it. She was dizzy. She was hungry.

She stopped once more in the kitchen. Eve was still holding a bloodied hand towel. Villanelle snatched it from her and threw it into the sink. She pressed the bottle of perfume into Eve’s hands, then kissed her. Their lips met hot and dry, both of their breaths hitching.

“Will you wear it?” Villanelle asked, backing away. Her black eye throbbed. “Until I come for you?”

Eve’s eyes were wild, her lips parted in confusion and shock.

“Wh-what is it called?” she asked.

Villanelle’s mind reeled with confusion. Hadn’t she already told her? Had she not? She let out a low, hysterical laugh.

“I named it _Eve_ ,” she said. “I wear you every day.”

Villanelle pulled open the front door and started down the stairs to the ground floor. Everything would go as she had said. It must. She would find Eve. She knew Eve would wear it. She knew Eve would drive to Germany. She knew Eve would tell no one about Prague.

If she did, where would she even start?

The perfume?

Or the knives?


End file.
